dorjeshugden.com
About Dorje Shugden => General Discussion => Topic started by: lodoe on March 18, 2008, 08:45:27 PM
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Dear friends,
1.I found this on you tube very interesting. It was clip of dalai lama proposal of sticks.
address is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvtX9nrRcL0
Must see it and comment.
2.Hey! Chinese Premier hold big conference yesterday and blame Dalai Lama. Even they said to possessed many evidences and proof of his involvement. After that this morning,Dalai lama hold press conference in Dharamsala. He was completely frustrated and angry over chinese accusation in recent tibet riots. He told that he would resign as leader of exile Tibetan government if people did not stop the protests. here reuters news in this evening but it was reedited. This morning in reuters also cited that Dalai lama asked to interrogate in his involvement by searching files in office and also check his pulse, urine and stool.
Even CNN;BBC, REUTERS and all other major independent news channel are covering up Dalai Lama talks.
So, It is sure that with Dorje Shugden Issue will be also suppressed in this way by those channel. Therefore also write them to acknowledge their wrong doing to prevent further such incidents.
Dalai Lama calls for end to violence in Tibet
Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:07pm EDT
BEIJING (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama said on Tuesday he would step down as head of Tibet's government-in-exile if that would stop bloodshed in his homeland, but China repeated its charge that he was the mastermind of a violent uprising.
His officials, based in the Indian Himalayan foothills, said they believed 99 people had died in clashes between Chinese security forces and Tibetans over the past week, including 19 on Tuesday alone.
Chinese state-run media said more than 100 people had given themselves up to police after taking part in Tibet's most intense unrest against Chinese rule for nearly two decades.
Baima Chilin, vice chairman of the Chinese-run government of Tibet, said they had been "participants, and some were directly involved in beating, smashing, looting and arson".
Authorities had set a Monday midnight deadline for rioters to hand themselves in or face tougher punishment if caught.
Premier Wen Jiabao defended the crackdown on Lhasa, capital of the mainly Buddhist mountain region, and on ethnic Tibetan areas of neighboring provinces where protests have erupted.
"There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique," Wen told a news conference in Beijing.
"This has all the more revealed the consistent claims by the Dalai clique that they pursue not independence but peaceful dialogue are nothing but lies."
RIOTS "SPONTANEOUS"
The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, denied the charges and said he would quit as political leader of the exiled Tibetan movement if the violence got out of hand.
"Please help stop violence from Chinese side and also from Tibetan side," the Nobel peace laureate told a news conference in Dharamsala, northern India. "If things become out of control then my only option is to completely resign."
He has said he cannot give up his role as Dalai Lama, the reincarnated spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. He says he does not seek independence for Tibet but wants autonomy within China, which sent troops into the region in 1950.
After days of anti-China protests led by monks, the unrest in Lhasa turned violent on Friday.
Mobs attacked non-Tibetan Chinese in the streets and set fire to shops and cars, in scenes sure to horrify a Chinese Communist leadership anxious to present an image of national harmony in the build-up to the Beijing Olympics.
The Dalai Lama's spokesman Tenzin Taklha said the rioting had spread fast. "This was very spontaneous," he said.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Christensen told a U.S. Congressional advisory panel hearing Washington had seen no evidence rioting was orchestrated by the Dalai Lama.
OLYMPIC "SABOTAGE"
There have been reports of further demonstrations this week. An exiled rights group, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, said on its Web site (www.tchrd.org) on Tuesday that 30 people had been arrested after protesting near Lhasa.
The group also reported three small protests and a massive military presence in Litang, an ethnic Tibetan town in Sichuan province, next to Tibet. Litang has seen unrest in the past.
Reuters was unable to confirm the reports. Phone calls to officials were not answered and foreign media are barred from traveling to Tibet without permission.
Chinese authorities have said security forces exercised restraint in Lhasa, using only non-lethal weapons, and that just 13 "innocent civilians" died.
Wen said the protesters "wanted to incite the sabotage of the Olympic Games in order to achieve their unspeakable goal".
The rights group Reporters Without Borders urged officials to boycott the Olympic opening ceremony in August over the "brutal repression" in Tibet. "Let's consider it," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told a news conference.
No government has called for a boycott of the Games themselves. But in Taiwan, presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou of the opposition Nationalists told reporters he would consider an Olympic boycott if elected on Saturday.
The International Tibet Support Network handed a letter to the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne calling for the route of the torch relay carrying the Olympic flame to be changed to avoid Tibet and three neighboring provinces.
In Brussels, a demonstrator was injured and four were detained when exiled Tibetans tried to force their way into China's mission to the European Union, police said. About 100 people protested in front of the Norwegian parliament.
Chinese authorities said they believed a March 7 "terrorist" incident, in which a flight to Beijing from the restive Xinjiang region had to cut short its journey, was a failed attack by separatists based abroad, state media reported.
Militant ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang, neighboring Tibet, have long agitated for an independent "East Turkestan" for their largely Muslim people. Exiled Uighurs have said China concocted the March 7 case to justify intense controls on Uighurs.
(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim and Guo Shipeng in Beijing, Jonathan Allen in Dharamsala, Marine Hass in Brussels, Paul Eckert in Washington and Francois Murphy in Paris; writing by John Chalmers; editing by Andrew Roche)
© Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
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Chinese beaten mercilessly - tourists
Article from: Agence France-Presse
By Sam Taylor in Kathmandu
March 18, 2008 11:39pm
RAMPAGING Tibetan youths stoned and beat Chinese
people in the Tibetan capital and set ablaze stores
but now calm has returned after a military clampdown,
say tourists emerging from the Himalayan region.
"It was an explosion of anger against the Chinese and
Muslims by the Tibetans,'' 19-year-old Canadian John
Kenwood said, describing an orgy of violence that
swept the ancient city of Lhasa.
Mr Kenwood and other tourists, who arrived by plane in
Nepal's capital Kathmandu yesterday, witnessed the
unrest, which reached a climax on Friday when they
said Han Chinese as well as Muslims were targeted.
They described scenes in which mobs relentlessly beat
and kicked ethnic Han Chinese, whose influx into the
region has been blamed by Tibetans for altering its
unique culture and way of life.
Mr Kenwood said he saw four or five Tibetan men on
Friday "mercilessly'' stoning and kicking a Chinese
motorcyclist.
"Eventually they got him on the ground, they were
hitting him on the head with stones until he lost
consciousness.
"I believe that young man was killed,'' Mr Kenwood
said, but added he could not be sure.
He said he saw no Tibetan deaths.
Tibet's government-in-exile said yesterday that the
"confirmed'' Tibetan death toll from more than a week
of unrest was 99.
China has said "13 innocent civilians'' died and that
it used no lethal force to subdue the rioting.
The Tibetans "were throwing stones at anything that
drove by", Mr Kenwood said.
"The young people were involved and the old people
were supporting by screaming - howling like wolves.
Everyone who looked Chinese was attacked,'' said
25-year-old Swiss tourist Claude Balsiger.
"They attacked an old Chinese man on a bicycle. They
hit his head really hard with stones (but) some old
Tibetan people went into the crowd to make them
stop,'' he said.
Mr Kenwood recounted another brave rescue when a
Chinese man was pleading for mercy from rock-wielding
Tibetans.
"They were kicking him in the ribs and he was bleeding
from the face,'' he said. "But then a white man walked
up... helped him up from the ground. There was a crowd
of Tibetans holding stones, he held the Chinese man
close, waved his hand at the crowd and they let him
lead the man to safety.''
Reacting to the tourists' accounts, Thubten Samphel, a
spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile in the
northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala, called the
violence "very tragic".
The Tibetans "have been told to keep their struggle
non-violent,'' he said.
The unrest began after Tibetans marked on March 10 the
49th anniversary of their failed uprising against
Chinese rule in 1959. Then, Tibet's Buddhist spiritual
leader the Dalai Lama trekked through the Himalayas
and crossed into India, making Dharamshala a base
after the revolt.
By last Saturday, Chinese security forces had locked
down the Tibetan capital.
The Chinese military ordered tourists to stay in their
hotels from where they said they could hear gunfire
and tear gas shells exploding.
On Monday the tourists were allowed some movement but
had to show their passports at frequent checkpoints.
"Shops were all burnt out - all the merchandise was on
the street in a bonfire. Many buildings were gutted,''
said Serge Lachapelle, a tourist from Montreal in
Canada.
"The Muslim district was entirely destroyed - every
store was destroyed,'' said Mr Kenwood.
__________________________________________
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BEIJING, China (CNN) -- James Miles, of The
Economist, has just returned from Lhasa, Tibet. The
following is a transcript of an interview he gave to
CNN.
art.miles.jpg
James Miles
Q. How easy was it for you to see what you wanted to
see?
A. Well remarkably so, given that the authorities are
normally extremely sensitive about the presence of
foreign journalists when this kind of incident occurs.
I was expecting all along that they were going to call
me up and tell me to leave Lhasa immediately. I think
what restrained them from doing that, one very
important factor in this, was the thoughts of the
Olympic Games that are going to be staged in Beijing
in August. And they have been going out of their way
to convince the rest of the world that China is
opening up in advance of this. I think they probably
didn't want me there but they knew that I was there
with official permission, and one thing they've been
trying to get across over the last few months is that
journalists based in Beijing can now get around the
country more freely than they could before. Of course
Tibet is a special example. I've been a journalist in
China now for 15 years altogether. This is the first
time that I've ever got official approval to go to
Tibet. And it's remarkable I think that they decided
to let me stay there and probably they felt that it
was a bit of a gamble. But as the protests went on I
think they also probably felt that having me there
would help to get across the scale of the
ethnically-targeted violence that the Chinese
themselves have also been trying to highlight.
Q. What you say you saw corroborates the official
version. What exactly did you see?
A. What I saw was calculated targeted violence against
an ethnic group, or I should say two ethnic groups,
primarily ethnic Han Chinese living in Lhasa, but also
members of the Muslim Hui minority in Lhasa. And the
Huis in Lhasa control much of the meat industry in the
city. Those two groups were singled out by ethnic
Tibetans. They marked those businesses that they knew
to be Tibetan owned with white traditional scarves.
Those businesses were left intact. Almost every single
other across a wide swathe of the city, not only in
the old Tibetan quarter, but also beyond it in areas
dominated by the ethnic Han Chinese. Almost every
other business was either burned, looted, destroyed,
smashed into, the property therein hauled out into the
streets, piled up, burned. It was an extraordinary
outpouring of ethnic violence of a most unpleasant
nature to watch, which surprised some Tibetans
watching it. So they themselves were taken aback at
the extent of what they saw. And it was not just
targeted against property either. Of course many
ethnic Han Chinese and Huis fled as soon as this broke
out. But those who were caught in the early stages of
it were themselves targeted. Stones thrown at them. At
one point, I saw them throwing stones at a boy of
maybe around 10 years old perhaps cycling along the
street. I in fact walked out in front of them and said
stop. It was a remarkable explosion of simmering
ethnic grievances in the city.
Q. Did you see other weapons?
A. I saw them carrying traditional Tibetan swords, I
didn't actually see them getting them out and
intimidating people with them. But clearly the purpose
of carrying them was to scare people. And speaking
later to ethnic Han Chinese, that was one point that
they frequently drew attention to. That these people
were armed and very intimidating.
Q. There was an official response to this. In some
reporting, info coming from Tibetan exiles, there was
keenness to report it as Tiananmen.
A. Well the Chinese response to this was very
interesting. Because you would expect at the first
sings of any unrest in Lhasa, which is a city on a
knife-edge at the best of times. That the response
would be immediate and decisive. That they would
cordon off whatever section of the city involved, that
they would grab the people involved in the unrest. In
fact what we saw, and I was watching it at the
earliest stages, was complete inaction on the part of
the authorities. It seemed as if they were paralyzed
by indecision over how to handle this. The rioting
rapidly spread from Beijing Road, this main central
thoroughfare of Lhasa, into the narrow alleyways of
the old Tibetan quarter. But I didn't see any attempt
in those early hours by the authorities to intervene.
And I suspect again the Olympics were a factor there.
That they were very worried that if they did move in
decisively at that early stage of the unrest that
bloodshed would ensue in their efforts to control it.
And what they did instead was let the rioting run its
course and it didn't really finish as far as I saw
until the middle of the day on the following day on
the Saturday, March the 15th. So in effect what they
did was sacrifice the livelihoods of many, many ethnic
Han Chinese in the city for the sake of letting the
rioters vent their anger. And then being able to move
in gradually with troops with rifles that they
occasionally let off with single shots, apparently
warning shots, in order to scare everybody back into
their homes and put an end to this.
Q. Would be false to suggest there was heavy-handed
security approach?
A. Well this was covering a vast area of the city and
I was the only foreign journalist, at least
accredited, to ... who was there to witness this. It
was impossible to get a total picture. I did hear
persistent rumors while I was there during this
rioting of isolated clashes between the security
forces and rioters. And rumors of occasional bloodshed
involved in that. But I can do no more really on the
basis of what I saw then say there was a probability
that some ethnic Chinese were killed in this violence,
and also a probability that some Tibetans, Tibetan
rioters themselves were killed by members of the
security forces. But it's impossible to get the kind
of numbers or real first hand evidences necessary to
back that up.
Q. Form any sense of where it would go from here?
A. Well I think they now have a huge problem on their
hands. When I left Lhasa yesterday the city was still
in a state of effectively Martial Law. They've been
bending over backwards this time not to declare
martial law as they did in 1989 after the last major
outbreak of anti-Chinese unrest in Lhasa. This time
they have not used that term and yet the conditions
now in Lhasa are pretty much the same as they were in
1989 under martial law. Officials say there are no
soldiers, no members of the People's Liberation Army
involved in this security operation. And yet I saw
numerous, many military vehicles, military looking
vehicles with telltale license plates covered up or
removed. And also many troops there whose uniforms
were distinctly lacking in the usual insignia of
either the police or the riot police. So my very, very
strong suspicion is that the army is out there and is
in control in Lhasa. And removing that security given
the way Tibetans are now focusing on the Olympics as a
window of opportunity, removing that security now I
think would be something they would be very, very
cautious about. And yet there are enormous pressures
on them to do so. Coming up to the Olympic torch
carrying ceremony in Lhasa in June. That is one
obvious event they will want the world to see and they
will want the world to see that Lhasa is normal. But I
think getting to that stage will be enormously tricky
given the depth of feeling in Lhasa itself among
Tibetans.
Q. Did you actually see clashes between security
forces and Tibetan protesters?
A. Well what I saw and at this stage, the situation
around my hotel which was right in the middle of the
old Tibetan quarter, was very tense indeed and quite
dangerous so it was difficult for me to freely walk
around the streets. But what I saw was small groups of
Tibetans, and this was on the second day of the
protests, throwing stones towards what I assumed to
be, and they were slightly out of vision, members of
the security forces. I would hear and indeed smell
occasional volleys of Tear gas fired back. There
clearly was a small scale clash going on between
Tibetans and the security forces. But on the second
day things had calmed down generally compared with the
huge rioting that was going on...on the Friday. And
the authorities were responding to these occasional
clashes with Tibetans not by moving forward rapidly
with either riot police and truncheons and shields, or
indeed troops with rifles. But for a long time, just
with occasional, with the very occasional round of
tear gas, which would send and I could see this,
people scattering back into these very, very, narrow
and winding alleyways. What I did not hear was
repeated bursts of machine gun fire, I didn't have
that same sense of an all out onslaught of massive
firepower that I sensed here in Beijing when I was
covering the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests
in June, 1989. This was a very different kind of
operation, a more calculated one, and I think the
effort of the authorities this time was to let people
let off steam before establishing a very strong
presence with troops, with guns, every few yards, all
across the Tibetan quarter. It was only when they felt
safe I think that there would not be massive
bloodshed, that they actually moved in with that
decisive force.
Q. At time you left, were Han Chinese moving freely
back?
A. There were some on the Saturday morning. On the
second day we came back to the shops and I saw them
picking through the wreckage, tears in their eyes.
They were astonished, as I was, at the lack of any
security presence on the previous day. It was only
during the night at the end of the first day that this
cordon was established around the old Tibetan quarter.
But even within it, for several hours afterwards,
people were still free to continue looting and setting
fires, and the authorities were still standing back.
And it was only as things fizzled out towards the
middle of the second day that as I say they moved in
in great numbers. Ethnic Chinese in Lhasa are now very
worried people. Some who had been there for many, many
years expressed to me their utter astonishment that
this had happened. They had no sense of great ethnic
tension being a part of life in Lhasa. Now numerous
Hans that I spoke to say that they are so afraid they
may leave the city, which may have very damaging
consequences for Lhasa's economy, Tibet's economy. Of
course one would expect that ethnic Chinese would
think twice now about coming into Lhasa for tourism,
and that's been a huge part of their economic growth
recently. And leaving Lhasa, I was sitting on a plane
next to some Chinese businessmen, they say that they
would normally come in and out of Lhasa by train. But
their fear now is that Tibetans will blow up the
railway line. That it is now actually safer to fly out
of Tibet than to go by railway. We have no evidence of
Terrorist activity by Tibetans, no accusation of that
nature so far. But that is a fear that's haunting some
ethnic Han Chinese now.
Q. When you were told to leave, what were you told?
A. Well I had an 8-day permit to be in Lhasa. That
permit began two days before the rioting, on March 12,
and was due to run out on March 19. My official
schedule was basically abandoned after a couple days
of this. Many of the places on my official itinerary
turned out to be hotspots in the middle of this
unrest. They left me to my own devices. I was stopped
by the police at one point, taken to a police station.
They made a few phone calls and then let me go back
out on the streets full of troops and police carrying
out the security crackdown. They insisted however that
when my permit did expire on the 19th that I had to
leave. I asked for an extension and they said
decisively no.
Q. So you weren't expelled? It just ran out?
A. Well we're in a gray area here. Because in theory
China has been opened up to foreign journalists since
January 2007, which means no longer, which was the
case before, do we have to apply for provincial level
government approval every time we leave Beijing for
reporting. The official regulations don't mention
Tibet. But orally, officials have made it clear that
Tibet is an exception to these new Olympic rules and
journalists who have made their own way there,
unofficially, both before this unrest and during it
have been caught or ... and expelled. Or those who
have succeeded in making it out without being detected
have been criticized by the authorities for doing so.
So one could argue that yes I was expelled, if one
looks at the regulations they've announced which one
could interpret as meaning we have the freedom to be
where we like. But in their interpretation, Tibet is
an exception and in their view they were being rather
liberal towards me by letting run to the end of my
official permit.
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Q. Is Dalai behind this?
A. Well we didn't see any evidence of any organized
activity, at least there was nothing in what I sensed
and saw during those couple of days of unrest in
Lhasa, there was anything organized behind it. And
I've seen organized unrest in China. The Tiananmen
Square protests in 1989 involved numerous
organizations spontaneously formed by people in
Beijing to oppose, or to call for more reform and
demand democracy. We didn't see that in Lhasa. There
were no organizations there that ... certainly none
that labeled themselves as such. These accusations
against what they call the Dalai Lama clique, are
ritual parts of the political rhetoric in Tibet. There
is a constant background rhetoric directed at the
Dalai Lama and his supporters in India. So it is not
at all surprising that they would repeat that
particular accusation in this case. But they haven't
come across, haven't produced any evidence of this
whatsoever. And I think it's more likely that what we
saw was yes inspired by a general desire of Tibetans
both inside Tibet and among the Dalai Lama's
followers, to take advantage of this Olympic year. But
also inspired simply by all these festering grievances
on the ground in Lhasa.
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He May Be a God, but He’s No Politician
By PATRICK FRENCH
NEARLY a decade ago, while staying with a nomad family
in the remote grasslands of northeastern Tibet, I
asked Namdrub, a man who fought in the anti-Communist
resistance in the 1950s, what he thought about the
exiled Tibetans who campaigned for his freedom.
“It may make them feel good, but for us, it makes
life worse,” he replied. “It makes the Chinese create
more controls over us. Tibet is too important to the
Communists for them even to discuss independence.”
Protests have spread across the Tibetan plateau over
the last two weeks, and at least 100 people have died.
Anyone who finds it odd that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has
rushed to Dharamsala, India, to stand by the Dalai
Lama’s side fails to realize that American politics
provided an important spark for the demonstrations.
Last October, when the Congressional Gold Medal was
awarded to the Dalai Lama, monks in Tibet watched over
the Internet and celebrated by setting off fireworks
and throwing barley flour. They were quickly arrested.
It was for the release of these monks that
demonstrators initially turned out this month. Their
brave stand quickly metamorphosed into a protest by
Lhasa residents who were angry that many economic
advantages of the last 10 or 15 years had gone to Han
Chinese and Hui Muslims. A young refugee whose family
is still in Tibet told me this week of the medal,
“People believed that the American government was
genuinely considering the Tibet issue as a priority.”
In fact, the award was a symbolic gesture, arranged
mostly to make American lawmakers feel good.
A similar misunderstanding occurred in 1987 when the
Dalai Lama was denounced by the Chinese state media
for putting forward a peace proposal on Capitol Hill.
To Tibetans brought up in the Communist system — where
a politician’s physical proximity to the leadership on
the evening news indicates to the public that he is in
favor — it appeared that the world’s most powerful
government was offering substantive political backing
to the Dalai Lama. Protests began in Lhasa, and
martial law was declared. The brutal suppression that
followed was orchestrated by the party secretary in
Tibet, Hu Jintao, who is now the Chinese president.
His response to the current unrest is likely to be
equally uncompromising.
The Dalai Lama is a great and charismatic spiritual
figure, but a poor and poorly advised political
strategist. When he escaped into exile in India in
1959, he declared himself an admirer of Mahatma
Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance. But Gandhi took huge
gambles, starting the Salt March and starving himself
nearly to death — a very different approach from the
Dalai Lama’s “middle way,” which concentrates on
nonviolence rather than resistance. The Dalai Lama has
never really tried to use direct action to leverage
his authority.
At the end of the 1980s, he joined forces with
Hollywood and generated huge popular support for the
Tibetan cause in America and Western Europe. This
approach made some sense at the time. The Soviet Union
was falling apart, and many people thought China might
do the same. In practice, however, the campaign
outraged the nationalist and xenophobic Chinese
leadership.
It has been clear since the mid-1990s that the popular
internationalization of the Tibet issue has had no
positive effect on the Beijing government. The
leadership is not amenable to “moral pressure,” over
the Olympics or anything else, particularly by the
nations that invaded Iraq.
The Dalai Lama should have closed down the Hollywood
strategy a decade ago and focused on back-channel
diplomacy with Beijing. He should have publicly
renounced the claim to a so-called Greater Tibet,
which demands territory that was never under the
control of the Lhasa government. Sending his envoys to
talk about talks with the Chinese while simultaneously
encouraging the global pro-Tibet lobby has achieved
nothing.
When Beijing attacks the “Dalai clique,” it is
referring to the various groups that make Chinese
leaders lose face each time they visit a Western
country. The International Campaign for Tibet, based
in Washington, is now a more powerful and effective
force on global opinion than the Dalai Lama’s outfit
in northern India. The European and American pro-Tibet
organizations are the tail that wags the dog of the
Tibetan government-in-exile.
These groups hate criticism almost as much as the
Chinese government does. Some use questionable
information. For example, the Free Tibet Campaign in
London (of which I am a former director) and other
groups have long claimed that 1.2 million Tibetans
have been killed by the Chinese since they invaded in
1950. However, after scouring the archives in
Dharamsala while researching my book on Tibet, I found
that there was no evidence to support that figure. The
question that Nancy Pelosi and celebrity advocates
like Richard Gere ought to answer is this: Have the
actions of the Western pro-Tibet lobby over the last
20 years brought a single benefit to the Tibetans who
live inside Tibet, and if not, why continue with a
failed strategy?
I first visited Tibet in 1986. The economic plight of
ordinary people is slightly better now, but they have
as little political freedom as they did two decades
ago. Tibet lacks genuine autonomy, and ethnic Tibetans
are excluded from positions of real power within the
bureaucracy or the army. Tibet was effectively a
sovereign nation at the time of the Communist invasion
and was in full control of its own affairs.
But the battle for Tibetan independence was lost 49
years ago when the Dalai Lama escaped into exile. His
goal, and that of those who want to help the Tibetan
people, should be to negotiate realistically with the
Chinese state. The present protests, supported from
overseas, will bring only more suffering. China is not
a democracy, and it will not budge. — New York Times
Patrick French is the author of “Tibet, Tibet: A
Personal History of a Lost Land.”
____________________________
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After week of rioting, Tibet now calm
China takes control of capital, sets midnight deadline
for protesters to turn themselves in
By Ching-Ching Ni
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Article Launched: 03/18/2008 03:03:05 AM PDT
BEIJING -- A Chinese shopkeeper in Tibet's capital
came out of hiding Monday for the first time since
mobs ransacked his herb store last week during the
biggest uprising against the region's Chinese rulers
in nearly two decades.
Ma Zhonglong, 20, said he had had nothing but a few
packets of instant noodles to eat since he ran for
cover Friday when he saw hundreds of Tibetans smash
and burn storefronts near the Jokhang Temple, the
religious and geographical heart of Lhasa, the Tibetan
capital.
"I went outside and saw people fighting on the
street," Ma said in a telephone interview. "I hurried
back and closed the door. Through the glass window I
could see the mob rushing toward me. They carried
knives, stones, sticks. I ran further back into this
courtyard to hide. Outside I could hear them smashing
everything."
On Monday morning, as Ma emerged and found his store
in ruins and expensive herbs looted, the Chinese
government had taken control of Lhasa and ordered all
rioters to turn themselves in by midnight or face
serious consequences.
A calm descended on the Tibetan capital Monday after a
week of protests that turned violent and spread to two
nearby provinces. Even Beijing, the Chinese capital
saw demonstrations, with dozens of students at the
Central University for Nationalities gathered for a
candlelight vigil under the heavy security presence.
Chinese authorities, weary of bad publicity in the
run-up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing in August and
eager
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to avoid any reminder of the violent crackdown on
pro-democracy student protests at Tiananmen Square in
1989, offered a portrait of official restraint during
the effort to restore order.
Qiangba Puncog, the head of the Tibet regional
government and who was in Beijing on Monday attending
the annual meeting of China's parliament, denied that
soldiers used lethal weapons or excess force. Rioters,
he said, set fire to more than 300 homes and shops,
leaving at least 13 civilians burned or stabbed to
death and 61 police officers injured.
Aides to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual
leader, have put the death toll at 80. There was no
independent way to verify the conflicting tolls
because Beijing forbids foreigners from visiting Tibet
without official permission.
Witnesses say that Lhasa had been turned into a war
zone, with both sides suffering casualties.
"I saw mayhem everywhere: Tibetans throwing rocks,
setting fires, people running scared like cats and
dogs," said a 27-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan
province, who was told to stay home by his employer.
"The Tibetans were looking for Han Chinese to kill,
adults and children.
"Somebody told me they hung these Chinese schoolboys
on the beams inside the Jokhang Temple, to protest, I
guess," said the migrant worker, who requested
anonymity and, like other Chinese in Lhasa, was
interviewed by telephone.
"It was very scary," said a 40-year-old Chinese man
who works in a car dealership with an office near the
Jokhang temple. "There was fire and killing
everywhere. When peace and stability is gone, ordinary
people suffer."
Authorities blamed the violence on a "small clique" of
Dalai Lama supporters who the government says
instigated chaos to put China in a bad light ahead of
the Olympics. The Nobel laureate, who fled Tibet in
1959 after a failed uprising and runs an exile
government in India, has denied any role in inciting
the violence.
China's critics blame the unrest and the underlying
ethnic tension on what they call the Communist
regime's long-standing policy of cultural and economic
strangulation, which they say has pushed Tibetans to
the breaking point.
As a result, the Tibetans and Chinese keep mostly to
themselves, reinforcing the ethnic divide and
simmering tensions.
"It's normal for the Tibetans to hate the Chinese. You
are on their turf, of course they hate you," said the
27-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan.
Zhaxi Duoji is a Tibetan who runs the Tibet Cafe and
Inn in southwestern China's Yunnan province. He
organizes regular tours to Tibet but had to put them
on hold since the disturbances began.
"I am a Tibetan, and I think what is happening in
Lhasa is terrible. I can say 90 percent of ordinary
Tibetans are opposed to this kind of violence," he
said in fluent Mandarin, adding that he is a Buddhist
and not a Communist Party member.
"The Chinese government's policy on Tibet is
improving," he said. "Every country has a minority of
people who want to go back to the past. That's based
on ignorance. Many Tibetans are disadvantaged because
they don't speak Mandarin, can't express themselves
and are easily taken advantage of by other people."
It remains to be seen how hard Beijing will clamp down
on the protesters today after the deadline for turning
themselves in. Meanwhile, extra security has been
deployed to other regions of western China.
"I know the Communist Party will take care of
everything by midnight and restore order," said the
migrant worker from Sichuan. "But then again, how can
we go back to normal with so many stores on so many
streets burned and destroyed?"
-
Tibet, the 'great game' and the CIA
By Richard M Bennett
Given the historical context of the unrest in Tibet, there is reason to believe Beijing was caught on the hop with the recent demonstrations for the simple reason that their planning took place outside of Tibet and that the direction of the protesters is similarly in the hands of anti-Chinese organizers safely out of reach in Nepal and northern India.
Similarly, the funding and overall control of the unrest has also been linked to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and by inference to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) because of his close cooperation with US intelligence for over 50 years.
Indeed, with the CIA's deep involvement with the Free Tibet Movement and its funding of the suspiciously well-informed Radio Free Asia, it would seem somewhat unlikely that any revolt could
have been planned or occurred without the prior knowledge, and even perhaps the agreement, of the National Clandestine Service (formerly known as the Directorate of Operations) at CIA headquarters in Langley.
Respected columnist and former senior Indian Intelligence officer, B Raman, commented on March 21 that "on the basis of available evidence, it was possible to assess with a reasonable measure of conviction" that the initial uprising in Lhasa on March 14 "had been pre-planned and well orchestrated".
Could there be a factual basis to the suggestion that the main beneficiaries to the death and destruction sweeping Tibet are in Washington? History would suggest that this is a distinct possibility.
The CIA conducted a large scale covert action campaign against the communist Chinese in Tibet starting in 1956. This led to a disastrous bloody uprising in 1959, leaving tens of thousands of Tibetans dead, while the Dalai Lama and about 100,000 followers were forced to flee across the treacherous Himalayan passes to India and Nepal.
The CIA established a secret military training camp for the Dalai Lama's resistance fighters at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, in the US. The Tibetan guerrillas were trained and equipped by the CIA for guerrilla warfare and sabotage operations against the communist Chinese.
The US-trained guerrillas regularly carried out raids into Tibet, on occasions led by CIA-contract mercenaries and supported by CIA planes. The initial training program ended in December 1961, though the camp in Colorado appears to have remained open until at least 1966.
The CIA Tibetan Task Force created by Roger E McCarthy, alongside the Tibetan guerrilla army, continued the operation codenamed ST CIRCUS to harass the Chinese occupation forces for another 15 years until 1974, when officially sanctioned involvement ceased.
McCarthy, who also served as head of the Tibet Task Force at the height of its activities from 1959 until 1961, later went on to run similar operations in Vietnam and Laos.
By the mid-1960s, the CIA had switched its strategy from parachuting guerrilla fighters and intelligence agents into Tibet to establishing the Chusi Gangdruk, a guerrilla army of some 2,000 ethnic Khamba fighters at bases such as Mustang in Nepal.
This base was only closed down in 1974 by the Nepalese government after being put under tremendous pressure by Beijing.
After the Indo-China War of 1962, the CIA developed a close relationship with the Indian intelligence services in both training and supplying agents in Tibet.
Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison in their book The CIA's Secret War in Tibet disclose that the CIA and the Indian intelligence services cooperated in the training and equipping of Tibetan agents and special forces troops and in forming joint aerial and intelligence units such as the Aviation Research Center and Special Center.
This collaboration continued well into the 1970s and some of the programs that it sponsored, especially the special forces unit of Tibetan refugees which would become an important part of the Indian Special Frontier Force, continue into the present.
Only the deterioration in relations with India which coincided with improvements in those with Beijing brought most of the joint CIA-Indian operations to an end.
Though Washington had been scaling back support for the Tibetan guerrillas since 1968, it is thought that the end of official US backing for the resistance only came during meetings between president Richard Nixon and the Chinese communist leadership in Beijing in February 1972.
Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer has described the outrage many field agents felt when Washington finally pulled the plug, adding that a number even "[turned] for solace to the Tibetan prayers which they had learned during their years with the Dalai Lama".
The former CIA Tibetan Task Force chief from 1958 to 1965, John Kenneth Knaus, has been quoted as saying, "This was not some CIA black-bag operation." He added, "The initiative was coming from ... the entire US government."
In his book Orphans of the Cold War, Knaus writes of the obligation Americans feel toward the cause of Tibetan independence from China. Significantly, he adds that its realization "would validate the more worthy motives of we who tried to help them achieve this goal over 40 years ago. It would also alleviate the guilt some of us feel over our participation in these efforts, which cost others their lives, but which were the prime adventure of our own."
Despite the lack of official support it is still widely rumored that the CIA were involved, if only by proxy, in another failed revolt in October 1987, the unrest that followed and the consequent Chinese repression continuing till May 1993.
The timing for another serious attempt to destabilize Chinese rule in Tibet would appear to be right for the CIA and Langley will undoubtedly keep all its options open.
China is faced with significant problems, with the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province; the activities of the Falun Gong among many other dissident groups and of course growing concern over the security of the Summer Olympic Games in August.
China is viewed by Washington as a major threat, both economic and military, not just in Asia, but in Africa and Latin America as well.
The CIA also views China as being "unhelpful" in the "war on terror", with little or no cooperation being offered and nothing positive being done to stop the flow of arms and men from Muslim areas of western China to support Islamic extremist movements in Afghanistan and Central Asian states.
To many in Washington, this may seem the ideal opportunity to knock the Beijing government off balance as Tibet is still seen as China's potential weak spot.
The CIA will undoubtedly ensure that its fingerprints are not discovered all over this growing revolt. Cut-outs and proxies will be used among the Tibetan exiles in Nepal and India's northern border areas.
Indeed, the CIA can expect a significant level of support from a number of security organizations in both India and Nepal and will have no trouble in providing the resistance movement with advice, money and above all, publicity.
However, not until the unrest shows any genuine signs of becoming an open revolt by the great mass of ethnic Tibetans against the Han Chinese and Hui Muslims will any weapons be allowed to appear.
Large quantities of former Eastern bloc small arms and explosives have been reportedly smuggled into Tibet over the past 30 years, but these are likely to remain safely hidden until the right opportunity presents itself.
The weapons have been acquired on the world markets or from stocks captured by US or Israeli forces. They have been sanitized and are deniable, untraceable back to the CIA.
Weapons of this nature also have the advantage of being interchangeable with those used by the Chinese armed forces and of course use the same ammunition, easing the problem of resupply during any future conflict.
Though official support for the Tibetan resistance ended 30 years ago, the CIA has kept open its lines of communications and still funds much of the Tibetan Freedom movement.
So is the CIA once again playing the "great game" in Tibet?
It certainly has the capability, with a significant intelligence and paramilitary presence in the region. Major bases exist in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and several Central Asian states.
It cannot be doubted that it has an interest in undermining China, as well as the more obvious target of Iran.
So the probable answer is yes, and indeed it would be rather surprising if the CIA was not taking more than just a passing interest in Tibet. That is after all what it is paid to do.
Since September 11, 2001, there has been a sea-change in US Intelligence attitudes, requirements and capabilities. Old operational plans have been dusted off and updated. Previous assets re-activated. Tibet and the perceived weakness of China's position there will probably have been fully reassessed.
For Washington and the CIA, this may seem a heaven-sent opportunity to create a significant lever against Beijing, with little risk to American interests; simply a win-win situation.
The Chinese government would be on the receiving end of worldwide condemnation for its continuing repression and violation of human rights and it will be young Tibetans dying on the streets of Lhasa rather than yet more uniformed American kids.
The consequences of any open revolt against Beijing, however, are that once again the fear of arrest, torture and even execution will pervade every corner of both Tibet and those neighboring provinces where large Tibetan populations exist, such as Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan.
And the Tibetan Freedom movement still has little likelihood of achieving any significant improvement in central Chinese policy in the long run and no chance whatever of removing its control of Lhasa and their homeland.
Once again it would appear that the Tibetan people will find themselves trapped between an oppressive Beijing and a manipulative Washington.
Beijing sends in the heavies
The fear that the United States, Britain and other Western states may try to portray Tibet as another Kosovo may be part of the reason why the Chinese authorities reacted as if faced with a genuine mass revolt rather than their official portrayal of a short-lived outbreak of unrest by malcontents supporting the Dalai Lama.
Indeed, so seriously did Beijing view the situation that a special security coordination unit, the 110 Command Center, has been established in Lhasa with the primary objective of suppressing the disturbances and restoring full central government control.
The center appears to be under the direct control of Zhang Qingli, first secretary of the Tibet Party and a President Hu Jintao loyalist. Zhang is also the former Xinjiang deputy party secretary with considerable experience in counter-terrorism operations in that region.
Others holding important positions in Lhasa are Zhang Xinfeng, vice minister of the Central Public Security Ministry and Zhen Yi, deputy commander of the People's Armed Police Headquarters in Beijing.
The seriousness with which Beijing is treating the present unrest is further illustrated by the deployment of a large number of important army units from the Chengdu Military Region, including brigades from the 149th Mechanized Infantry Division, which acts as the region's rapid reaction force.
According to a United Press International report, elite ground force units of the People's Liberation Army were involved in Lhasa, and the new T-90 armored personnel carrier and T-92 wheeled armored vehicles were deployed. According to the report, China has denied the participation of the army in the crackdown, saying it was carried out by units of the armed police. "Such equipment as mentioned above has never been deployed by China's armed police, however."
Air support is provided by the 2nd Army Aviation Regiment, based at Fenghuangshan, Chengdu, in Sichuan province. It operates a mix of helicopters and STOL transports from a frontline base near Lhasa. Combat air support could be quickly made available from fighter ground attack squadrons based within the Chengdu region.
The Xizang Military District forms the Tibet garrison, which has two mountain infantry units; the 52nd Brigade based at Linzhi and the 53rd Brigade at Yaoxian Shannxi. These are supported by the 8th Motorized Infantry Division and an artillery brigade at Shawan, Xinjiang.
Tibet is also no longer quite as remote or difficult to resupply for the Chinese army. The construction of the first railway between 2001 and 2007 has significantly eased the problems of the movement of large numbers of troops and equipment from Qinghai onto the rugged Tibetan plateau.
Other precautions against a resumption of the long-term Tibetan revolts of previous years has led to a considerable degree of self-sufficiency in logistics and vehicle repair by the Tibetan garrison and an increasing number of small airfields have been built to allow rapid-reaction units to gain access to even the most remote areas.
The Chinese Security Ministry and intelligence services had been thought to have a suffocating presence in the province and indeed the ability to detect any serious protest movement and suppress resistance.
Richard M Bennett, intelligence and security consultant, AFI Research.
(Copyright 2008 Richard M Bennett.)
-
Monday 17 March 2008
Brendan O’Neill
Using Tibet to settle scores with China
Tibetans want to be free. But they’ve been given a
green light to riot by Western elements driven more by
spite and envy than a love for liberty.
The grainy, sneaked-out footage of Tibetans rioting in
Lhasa and in parts of China itself clearly reveals one
thing: Tibetans want more control over their daily
lives and destinies. Frustrated with living under
illiberal and undemocratic Chinese rule, they are
lashing out against what they consider to be symbols
of Chinese domination: Han Chinese businesses and
buildings owned by Chinese officialdom.
But there’s another story behind the images of
instability being broadcast around the world, a more
complex, dangerous and difficult-to-spot story of
cynical, spiteful political manoeuvring. Elements in
the West have effectively encouraged Tibetans to riot,
not because they are committed to democracy and
liberty, but because they fear and loathe the Chinese.
Western encouragement of Tibetan instability may dress
itself in the rallying cry of ‘Free Tibet!’, but its
real motivation is to ‘Humiliate China!’
The Tibetan protesters’ angry outbursts reveal their
deep-seated dissatisfaction with life under the
Stalinist regime. Yet the protests can also be seen as
a physical, violent manifestation of Western
China-bashing, which is increasing in intensity as the
Beijing Olympics approach. For the past three months,
Western officials and commentators have implicitly
(and sometimes explicitly) encouraged Tibetans and
others to ‘use the Olympics to humiliate China’ (1).
Taking their cue, at least in part, from Western
culture’s feverish fear and suspicion of China,
Tibetans have launched protests that seem designed as
much to please Western observers as to push through
real, meaningful changes in Tibet and China.
In both their timing and their presentation, the
protests seem more a product of Western cajoling than
of an independent, groundswell demand for liberty
amongst Tibetans. It is no coincidence that the
protests, reportedly the biggest amongst Tibetans
since the late 1980s, have erupted in the run-up to
Beijing 2008. Vast numbers of political entrepreneurs
and activists are trying to transform the Olympics
into a platform for moral posturing and China-bashing.
According to the International Herald Tribune, such is
the frenzied politicisation of the Olympics by Western
officials and campaigners that athletes are becoming
confused about which cause to support. They have found
themselves ‘overwhelmed by menu choices’ and also by
numerous ‘wardrobe decisions’: should they wear a
‘China, Please’ armband to protest against China’s
links with Sudan, or a yellow ‘Livestrong’ bracelet to
indicate their support for a ‘pollution-free games and
lead-free toys’? An American triathlete has
complained: ‘Every time you turn around, there is
someone trying to make a statement about something.’
(2) The relentless politicisation of the Olympics by
Western elements, the widespread discussion of Beijing
2008 as an opportunity to ‘humiliate China’, has
helped to create a volatile atmosphere in the more
restive parts of China and its surrounding
territories, including Tibet.
Presentation-wise, the protesters’ use of English
slogans and their speedy dissemination of mobile-phone
footage suggest the demonstrations are aimed very much
at a Western audience. In the march of the Tibetan
monks in northern India last week, and during the more
fiery protests in Tibet and China over the weekend,
Tibetans carried placards with English-language
demands such as ‘Tibet Needs You’. They wore headbands
saying ‘Free Tibet’ - the favoured slogan of Western
middle-class and even aristocratic pro-Tibet
sympathisers, such as Prince Charles (3). Tibetan
monks in Dharamsala, India (where the Tibetan
government-in-exile resides, led by the Dalai Lama)
have put up English posters saying ‘Beijing 2008: A
Celebration of Human Rights Violations’ (4). One
British newspaper has celebrated Tibetan protesters’
use of ‘the most dangerous weapon in the world - the
cameras on their mobile phones’ (5). Many Western
observers who cheer Tibetans for using this ‘weapon’
to beam images of their struggle around the world
would probably feel very uncomfortable if Tibetans
used real weapons to force their Stalinist rulers to
make changes or concessions.
The protests seem orientated very much towards the
outside world. They appear to gain their legitimacy
and fire from today’s widespread China-bashing, and
they seem designed, in some ways, for Western
consumption. This shows the extent to which Tibetans
have become caught up in a global tug-of-war between
the West and China. No doubt some people feel
genuinely inspired by the Tibetan unrest, but many of
the Western elements cheering the Tibetan cause and
encouraging the Tibetans to ‘humiliate China’ are
motivated less by a genuine commitment to liberty and
democracy than by a deep and cynical desire to make
life difficult for the Chinese.
Today’s Tibetan protests are taking place in a broad,
quite sinister political context: the West’s
transformation of China into a cultural and political
target. In recent years, China has inexorably, and in
some ways unconsciously, been transformed into a
whipping boy for the West. Anti-Chinese sentiments cut
across the political divide: on both the old right and
the new left, attacking China for its economic growth,
human rights record, environmental destruction or
suppression of the Tibetan people has become de
rigueur. There is an unspoken consensus today -
amongst Western officials, commentators and radical
activists - that China is a global threat which must
be put back in its place with a short, sharp dose of
humiliation. Far more than the demonisation of the
Soviet Union as the ‘Evil Empire’ during the Cold War
era, the labelling of China as a dirty,
uncontrollable, violent beast enjoys widespread,
unquestioned support throughout political circles in
the West.
On the right, China-bashing has become a way of
settling old scores from the Cold War. American
right-wing thinkers and officials seem to take comfort
in the familiar feeling of standing up to an ‘old
communist foe’. Robbed of the ‘Evil Empire’ in the
East by the end of the Cold War, and thrown by the
unpredictability of global affairs more broadly, old
right elements cling to China as an old-fashioned
enemy from an era when politics was simpler and
international affairs were more black-and-white; they
are trying to recreate that era with a new
‘yellow-and-white’ divide between barbaric China and
the civilised USA (6). Last week, the Pentagon made a
splash with its annual report to US Congress on the
threat posed by Chinese military power. It was hard
not to nod, at least in partial agreement, with the
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman who accused
officials in the Pentagon of being consumed by ‘Cold
War thinking’ (7).
There is also an element of palpable jealousy in
right-wing attacks on contemporary China. As America’s
economy spins from one crisis to another, becoming
reliant in many ways on East Asian cash to bail it
out, traditionalist economic thinkers are discussing
Chinese growth as a problem and a threat. Using the
language of environmentalism - clearly sensing that
old-fashioned protectionism would not go down very
well today - establishment publications in the US
publish essays with headlines such as ‘Choking on
growth’; they argue that if China is to reduce its
carbon emissions (that is, slow down its growth) then
there will have to be a ‘wholesale mindset change’
amongst the Chinese people (8). Books such as The
River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to
China’s Future are snapped up and celebrated by
traditionalist American thinkers and economists (9).
Amongst left-leaning campaign groups and writers,
China has become the No.1 International Bogeyman
because of what they see as its ceaseless
industrialisation. Westerners who find the idea of
growth so nineteenth-century openly discuss China as a
poisonous nation that is killing its own people and
possibly the planet. Liberal green writers see only
the ‘dust, waste and dirty water’ in modern China;
they describe the economic progress there as the ‘mass
poisoning of a people and the ecological devastation
of a nation’, which is a product, apparently, of greed
- ‘ours and theirs’ (10). Those greedy Chinese,
getting jobs in the city and buying cars and TVs… why
don’t they go back to the paddy fields where they
belong? Green campaign groups call on Western nations
to cut their political and economic ties with China,
and instruct Western consumers that ‘If it says “Made
in China”, don’t buy it’: only then, they argue, will
‘The World’s Biggest CO2 Emitter’ and ‘The World’s
No.1 Consumer of Coal’ (that’s ‘China’ to those of us
who don’t think and speak in the dehumanising language
of trendy China-bashers) be forced to change its ways
(11). They fancy this as a radical stance, but in
today’s Great China-Bashing Consensus, greens are
merely the protesting wing of the backward, fearful,
protectionist politics of a West worried about the
‘Chinese threat’.
In many ways, campaigners and commentators in the West
are projecting their own disgust with ‘the Western way
of life’ on to China. They see in China everything
that they doubt or loathe about modernity itself. That
is why commentators frequently tell China not to make
‘the same mistakes that we made’. On everything from
economic growth to sporting competitiveness, from the
use of coal to the building of skyscrapers, today’s
China-bashing is motivated by Western self-loathing,
as well as by spite and envy towards the seemingly
successful Chinese. Ironically, this means that China
is now seen as ‘the Other’ precisely because it
appears too Western: it is China’s ambition, growth,
its leaps forward - things that a more confident West
might once have celebrated - which make it seem alien
to Western observers who today prefer carbon-counting
to factory-building and road tolls to road
construction. China-bashing is underpinned by a crisis
of belief in the West in things such as progress,
growth, development.
It is the sweeping consensus that China is dangerous
and diseased that has attracted Western observers to
the issue of Tibet. Both left and right elements in
the West are exploiting the Tibet issue as a way of
putting pressure on China. They are less interested in
securing real freedom and equality for Tibetans, and
for the Chinese people more broadly, than they are in
using and abusing internal disgruntlement in China and
nearby territories as a way of humiliating the Chinese
government. That is why Tibetans can symbolise
different things to different people. For conservative
commentators, the Tibetans are warriors for freedom
against a Stalinist monolith; their protests are a
replay of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in
1989 (12). For greener, more liberal campaigners,
Tibetans are symbols of natural and mystical purity in
contrast to rampant Western and Chinese consumerism.
As one author puts it, Tibetan culture offers
‘powerful, untarnished and coherent alternatives to
Western egotistical lifestyles [and] our gradually
more pointless pursuit of material interests’ (13).
Various political factions in the West are using
Tibetans as ventriloquist dummies in order to mouth
their own complaints against modern China. They are
promoting Tibetan unrest not to liberate Tibetans but
in the hope that the protests will represent their own
personal disgust for China in a real-world, physical
manner.
There is a long history of Western politicians and
activists using Tibet as a stick with which to beat
China. In his fascinating book Prisoners of
Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, Donald S
Lopez Jnr shows how, in the Western imagination, ‘the
invasion of Tibet by [China] was and still is
represented as an undifferentiated mass of godless
Communists overrunning a peaceful land devoted only to
ethereal pursuits… Tibet embodies the spiritual and
the ancient, China the material and the modern.
Tibetans are superhuman, Chinese are subhuman.’ (14)
Today, too, pro-Tibetan activism often disguises a
view of the Chinese as subhuman. Indeed, in the
current, all-encompassing right/left consensus about
China, even left-leaning campaigns can employ old
right tactics of demonising the Chinese. A poster for
the trendy campaign group Free Tibet shows Tibetans as
serene and peaceful and the Chinese as smog-producing
modernisers with distinctly slitty eyes and goofy
teeth (15).
spiked is no friend of the Chinese regime. Yet those
promoting self-serving internal unrest in the run-up
to the Olympics, encouraging Tibetans and others to
bash China for real where the West only does it with
words and propaganda, are playing a dangerous game
indeed. Such a strategy of cynical destabilisation
could unleash yet more violence in China, and have
repercussions around the world. And the biggest
losers, at least in the short term, are likely to be
Tibetans themselves: they will not win liberty or
equality by being transformed into performing
protesters for the benefit of Chinaphobic Westerners.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spike
-
TIBET CRISIS COULD BE ENDGAME FOR THE DALAI LAMA
by Yoichi Shimatsu
(PNS) -- For decades, the Beijing government had recognized the Dalai Lama as its sole negotiating partner in Tibetan affairs. For the officialdom, it was simpler to deal with a single person -- the "pontiff" of Tibetan Buddhism -- to control the entire ethnic population. The facade of Tibetan unity was convenient to both sides but now it has unraveled, and it's the endgame for the Dalai Lama.
By ordering the monks of his Gelugpa or Yellow Hat sect to hold peaceful rallies on the 49th anniversary of the Chinese invasion, the Dalai Lama -- unwittingly -- ignited pent-up emotions among Lhasa residents. Scenes like the head bashing, stoning and kicking of a prostrate bicycle owner arose from popular grievances against runaway price inflation and perceived discrimination against Tibetans in their own land. Such cruelty, regardless of past injustices, has nothing to do with Buddhist teachings but arises from the human condition.
Unfortunately for the Dalai Lama, the loyalists in his once-powerful organization inside Tibet are being selectively investigated, arrested and detained for causing the violence. The Beijing government has repeatedly stated that only a small minority of Tibetans loyal to the Dalai Lama were involved in the protests. Whatever its legal flaws, there's more than a grain of truth in the official assertion.
Amid the mayhem and anarchy, a decisive factor in the Tibetan equation has gone practically unnoticed: Key major players did not join or support the protests:
*
The Panchen Lama, a top prelate of the Gelugpa or Yellow Hat school, second in rank only to the Dalai Lama himself, has spoken in no uncertain terms against the rioting and instead backed the government.
*
Leaders of the Nyingma and Sakya schools, as well as the native Bon religion, did not endorse the protests and are tight-lipped about the wave of arrests.
*
Laymen with the re-ascendant Kagyupa or Black Hat school, are furious with the Dalai Lama after being targeted by Gelugpa supporters during the horsemen's raid on the Hezuo local district office in south Gansu and in several counties in Sichuan Province.
In this negative light, the rallies by the Gelugpa monks seemed a desperate bid to reassert the Dalai Lama's authority by accusing their Tibetan rivals of being "collaborators" and presenting themselves as the "resistance." Due to the unintended violence, however, the Yellow Hats find themselves as the odd man out. Following the crackdown, rival sects are moving to dismantle the remnants of the Gelugpa organization, which had the monopoly of power over the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and other districts as recently as five years ago.
If the facade of Tibetan unity was convenient, it now no longer serves.
In January 2000, the Chinese view of the Dalai Lama started to undergo a radical change during the affair known as the "Flight of the Karmapa" -- covered in a documentary by Nachtvision. The Karmapa is the head lama of the Kagyupa, or Black Hat school, which ruled Tibet until the reign of the 5th Dalai Lama began in 1642.
At the turn of the millennium, the teenage Karmapa, born Ogyen Trinley Dorje, began a secret journey from his seat in Tsurphu monastery, west of Lhasa, to Sikkim in north India to recover the mystic Black Crown of the Kagyupa. In the bid to strengthen his nomination against other contenders, the Karmapa rode horseback on a tortuous path through the frozen wilderness of Nepal's Mustang region. At the 4,500-meters altitude Thorong-La Pass, he was separated from his Nepalese Kagyupa guide and whisked aboard a mountain-rescue helicopter. He soon turned up under virtual house arrest near the Dalai Lama's headquarters in Dharamsala, India.
As told by his guide, the Venerable Gyaltsen Rimpoche, nicknamed the "Tall Manangi," the Ogyen Trinley had to retrieve the charismatic crown because "in Lhasa the Karmapa was rising and becoming more popular, so the Gelugpa did not like it and the situation was becoming dangerous for him." Only the magic talisman could turn the tables on the powerful Yellow Hats.
In the eyes of many Kagyupa monks, the Karmapa has been abducted by the Dalai Lama's exile government and remains a hostage to the senior leader of a rival sect. The Black Hats responded furiously with demands to Beijing that Gelugpa monks should be stripped of their control over the Tibet province budget and other privileges.
Feeling sorely betrayed by the Dalai Lama, who had earlier backed the appointment of Orgyen Trinley as Karmapa, Beijing consented to the Black Hat's harsh demands. Thus ended the Yellow Hats' monopoly on power inside Tibet. Since then, the local governments of many Tibetan zones have been taken over by laymen loyal to the Black Hats. Hezuo, the scene of the horsemen's well-publicized raid, is the site of the Kagyupa's Milarepa Shrine. Horses were used in the attack because the raiders came from the Xiahe district, the stronghold of the rival Gelugpa's Labrang Monastery.
This realignment of sectarian power in Tibet, which can be compared with the Protestant Reformation in Europe, is only now coming to light in public discourse after the Lhasa riots. A People's Daily editorial, titled "No return to old Tibet" (March 18), stated: "the political exile (Dalai Lama) has continued his rule with an iron fist that smashes any challenge to his power from anyone or any sect. . . . Local Tibetans have managed their affairs well without his interference."
In private, many exiles across the Himalayas, including former Khampa guerrillas who fought the Chinese army in the 1960s, recount disturbing allegations of the Dalai Lama's security team's involvement in the murdering of his critics by poisoning and bombing. This dark side of intra-Tibetan intrigue is yet to be factually uncovered before world opinion.
In an ultimate irony, the only person who can prevent the coming demolition and disgrace of the Gelugpa school is Gyeltshen Norbu, the Beijing-appointed Panchen Lama.
The Panchen Lama probably won't rush to their defense, not after pro-Dharamsala lamas lobbied furiously against Beijing's attempt to appoint the young lama as a delegate to the National People's Congress, held in early March, arguing that he was not yet 18 years of age. To avoid controversy, Beijing reluctantly conceded, even though the official birth date of Gyeltshen Norbu was February 13, 1990, making him 18 and eligible.
The Panchen Lama is likely to receive Buddhist VIPs at the Beijing Olympics. An audience and blessing from the bright young monk will certainly win international support for his confirmation of the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. It is the traditional custom for the Panchen Lama to confirm the reincarnated Dalai Lama and vice versa. By contrast, high-ranking monks have scoffed at the Dalai Lama's idea of forming a committee to elect a successor.
The recent uprising in Lhasa, despite its grim pathos, is a reminder of the tragic 1959 insurrection that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Tibetans. In both cases, the 14th Dalai Lama badly miscalculated the divisions among his own people, Beijing's strategic determination, and the moral hypocrisy of the international community.
In the Buddhist view, all things come full circle. In the 17th century, the 5th Dalai Lama called in a Mongol general to overthrow the Karmapa's theocracy. Today, the Karmapa's men are ousting the Gelugpa power structure. Ceaseless change is unstoppable, taught Sakyamuni Buddha. Thus, attachment only results in suffering -- our attachment to wealth, power, pride, respect and, most of all, to love, the meanest vice yet highest virtue of human existence. Not even his bitter opponents can dispute the deep love of His Holiness the Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso for his homeland, Tibet. How difficult it must be now, to let go.
Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly in Tokyo, was executive producer of the video documentary "Flight of a Karmapa"
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> Protests in Tibet and Separatism: the Olympics and
> Beyond
>
> by Barry Sautman,
> Associate Professor
> Division of Social Science
> Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
>
> Recent protests in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas were
> organized to embarrass the Chinese government ahead of
> the Olympics. The Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), the
> major Tibetan exile organization that advocates
> independence for Tibet and has endorsed using violent
> methods to achieve it, has said as much. Its head,
> Tsewang Rigzin, stated in a March 15 interview with the
> Chicago Tribune that since it is likely that Chinese
> authorities would suppress protests in Tibet, "With the
> spotlight on them with the Olympics, we want to test
> them. We want them to show their true colors. That's
> why we're pushing this." At the June, 2007 Conference
> for an Independent Tibet organized in India by "Friends
> of Tibet," speakers pointed out that the Olympics
> present a unique opportunity for protests in Tibet. In
> January, 2008, exiles in India launched a "Tibetan
> People's Uprising Movement" to "act in the spirit" of
> the violent 1959 uprising against Chinese government
> authority and focus on the Olympics.
>
> Several groups of Tibetans were likely involved in the
> protests in Lhasa, including in the burning and looting
> of non-Tibetan businesses and attacks against Han and
> Hui (Muslim Chinese) migrants to Tibet. The large
> monasteries have long been centers of separatism, a
> stance cultivated by the TYC and other exile entities,
> many of which are financed by the US State Department
> or the US Congress' National Endowment for Democracy.
> Monks are self-selected to be especially devoted to the
> Dalai Lama. However much he may characterize his own
> position as seeking only greater autonomy for Tibet,
> monks know he is unwilling to declare that Tibet is an
> inalienable part of China, an act China demands of him
> as a precondition to formal negotiations. Because the
> exile regime eschews a separation of politics and
> religion, many monks deem adherence to the Dalai Lama's
> stance of non-recognition of the Chinese government's
> legitimacy in Tibet to be a religious obligation.
>
> Reports on the violence have underscored that Tibetan
> merchants competing with Han and Hui are especially
> antagonistic to the presence of non-Tibetans. Alongside
> monks, Tibetan merchants were the mainstay of protests
> in Lhasa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This time
> around, many Han and Hui-owned shops were torched. Many
> of those involved in arson, looting, and ethnic-based
> beatings are also likely to have been unemployed young
> men. Towns have experienced much rural-to-urban
> migration of Tibetans with few skills needed for urban
> employment. Videos from Lhasa showed the vast majority
> of rioters were males in their teens or twenties.
>
> The recent actions in Tibetan areas differ from the
> broad-based demonstrations of "people power" movements
> in several parts of the world in the last few decades.
> They hardly show the overwhelming Tibetan anti-Chinese
> consensus portrayed in the international media. The
> highest media estimate of Tibetans who participated in
> protests is 20,000 -- by Steve Chao, the Beijing Bureau
> Chief of Canadian Television News, i.e. one of every
> 300 Tibetans. Compare that to the 1986 protests against
> the Marcos dictatorship by about three million -- one
> out of every 19 Filipinos.
>
> Tibetans have legitimate grievances about not being
> sufficiently helped to compete for jobs and in business
> with migrants to Tibet. There is also job
> discrimination by Han migrants in favor of family
> members and people from their native places. The gaps
> in education and living standards between Tibetans and
> Han are substantial and too slow in narrowing. The
> grievances have long existed, but protests and rioting
> took place this year because the Olympics make it
> opportune for separatists to advance their agenda.
> Indeed, there was a radical disconnect between Tibetan
> socio-economic grievances and the slogans raised in the
> protests, such as "Complete Independence for Tibet" and
> "May the exiles and Tibetans inside Tibet be reunited,"
> slogans that not coincidentally replicate those raised
> by pro-independence Tibetan exiles.
>
> While separatists will not succeed in detaching Tibet
> from China by rioting, they believe that China will
> eventually collapse, like the former Soviet Union and
> Yugoslavia, and they seek to establish their claim to
> rule before that happens. Alternatively, they think
> that the United States may intervene, as it has
> elsewhere, to foster the breakaway of regions in
> countries to which the US is antagonistic, e.g. Kosovo
> and southern Sudan. The Chinese government also fears
> such eventualities, however unlikely they are to come
> to pass. It accordingly acts to suppress separatism, an
> action that comports with its rights under
> international law.
>
> Separatists know they can count on the automatic
> sympathy of Western politicians and media, who view
> China as a strategic economic and political competitor.
> Western elites have thus widely condemned China for
> suppressing riots that these elites would never allow
> to go unsuppressed in their own countries. They demand
> that China be restrained in its response; yet, during
> the Los Angeles uprising or riots of 1992 -- which
> spread to a score of other major cities -- President
> George H.W. Bush stated when he send in thousands of
> soldiers, that "There can be no excuse for the murder,
> arson, theft or vandalism that have terrorized the
> people of Los Angeles... Let me assure you that I will
> use whatever force is necessary to restore order."
> Neither Western politicians nor mainstream media
> attacked him on this score, while neither Western
> leaders nor the Dalai Lama have criticized those
> Tibetans who recently engaged in ethnic-based attacks
> and arsons.
>
> Western elites give the Chinese government no
> recognition for significant improvements in the lives
> of Tibetans as a result of subsidies from the China's
> central government and provinces, improvements that the
> Dalai Lama has himself admitted. Western politicians
> and media also consistently credit the Dalai Lama's
> charge that "cultural genocide" is underway in Tibet,
> even though the exiles and their supporters offer no
> credible evidence of the evisceration of Tibetan
> language use, religious practice or art. In fact, more
> than 90 % of Tibetans speak Tibetan as their mother
> tongue. Tibet has about 150,000 monks and nuns, the
> highest concentration of full-time "clergy" in the
> Buddhist world. Western scholars of Tibetan literature
> and art forms have attested that it is flourishing.
>
> Ethnic contradictions in Tibet arise from the
> demography, economy and politics of the Tibetan areas.
> Separatists and their supporters claim that Han Chinese
> have been "flooding" into Tibet, "swamping" Tibetans
> demographically. In fact, between the national censuses
> of 1990 and 2000 (which count everyone who has lived in
> an area for six months or more), the percentage of
> Tibetans in the Tibetan areas as a whole increased
> somewhat and Han were about one-fifth of the
> population. A preliminary analysis of the 2005 mini-
> census shows that from 2000-2005 there was a small
> increase in the proportion of Han in the central-
> western parts of Tibet (the Tibet Autonomous Region or
> TAR) and little change in eastern Tibet. Pro-
> independence forces want the Tibetan areas cleansed of
> Han (as happened in 1912 and 1949); the Dalai Lama has
> said he will accept a three-to-one Tibetan to non-Tibet
> population ratio, but he consistently misrepresents the
> present situation as one of a Han majority. Given his
> status as not merely the top Tibetan Buddhist religious
> leader, but as an emanation of Buddha, most Tibetans
> credit whatever he says on this or other topics.
>
> The Tibetan countryside, where three-fourths of the
> population lives, has very few non-Tibetans. The vast
> majority of Han migrants to Tibetan towns are poor or
> near-poor. They are not personally subsidized by the
> state; although like urban Tibetans, they are
> indirectly subsidized by infrastructure development
> that favors the towns. Some 85 % of Han who migrate to
> Tibet to establish businesses fail; they generally
> leave within two to three years. Those who survive
> economically offer competition to local Tibetan
> business people, but a comprehensive study in Lhasa has
> shown that non-Tibetans have pioneered small and medium
> enterprise sectors that some Tibetans have later
> entered and made use of their local knowledge to
> prosper.
>
> Tibetans are not simply an underclass; there is a
> substantial Tibetan middle class, based in government
> service, tourism, commerce, and small-scale
> manufacturing/ transportation. There are also many
> unemployed or under-employed Tibetans, but almost no
> unemployed or underemployed Han because those who
> cannot find work leave. Many Han migrants have racist
> attitudes toward Tibetans, mostly notions that Tibetans
> are lazy, dirty, and obsessed with religion. Many
> Tibetans reciprocate with representations of Han as
> rich, money-obsessed and conspiring to exploit
> Tibetans. Long-resident urban Tibetans absorb aspects
> of Han culture in much the same way that ethnic
> minorities do with ethnic majority cultures the world
> over. Tibetans are not however being forcibly
> "Sincized." Most Tibetans speak little or no Chinese.
> They begin to learn it in the higher primary grades
> and, in many Tibetan areas, must study in it if they go
> on to secondary education. Chinese, however, is one of
> the two most important languages in the world and
> considerable advantages accrue to those who learn it,
> just as they do to non-native English speakers.
>
> The Tibetan exiles argue that religious practice is
> sharply restricted in Tibetan areas. The Chinese
> government has the right under international law to
> regulate religious institutions to prevent them from
> being used as vehicles for separatism and the control
> of religion is in fact mostly a function of the state's
> (overly-developed) concern about separatism and
> secondarily about how the hyper-development of
> religious institutions counteracts "development" among
> ethnic Tibetans. Certain state policies do infringe on
> freedom of religion; for example, the forbidding, in
> the TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region), of state employees
> and university students to participate in religious
> rites. The lesser degree of control over religion in
> the eastern Tibetan areas beyond the TAR-- at least
> before the events of March, 2008 -- indicate however
> that the Chinese government calibrates its control
> according to the perceived degree of separatist
> sentiment in the monasteries.
>
> The Dalai Lama's regime was of course itself a
> theocracy that closely regulated the monasteries,
> including the politics, hierarchy and number of monks.
> The exile authorities today circumscribe by fiat those
> religious practices they oppose, such as the
> propitiation of a "deity" known as Dorje Shugden. The
> cult of the Dalai Lama, which is even stronger among
> monks than it is among Hollywood stars, nevertheless
> mandates acceptance of his claim that restrictions on
> religious management and practice in Tibet arise solely
> from the Chinese state's supposed anti-religious
> animus. Similarly, the cult requires the conviction
> that the Dalai Lama is a pacifist, even though he has
> explicitly or implicitly endorsed all wars waged by the
> US.
>
> The development of the "market economy" has had much
> the same effect in Tibetan areas as in the rest of
> China, i.e. increased exploitation, exacerbated income
> and wealth differentials, and rampant corruption. The
> degree to which this involves an "ethnic division of
> labor" that disadvantages Tibetans is however
> exaggerated by separatists in order to foster ethnic
> antagonism. For example, Tibet is not the poorest area
> of China, as is often claimed. It is better off than
> several other ethnic minority areas and even than some
> Han areas, in large measure due to heavy government
> subsidies. Rural Tibetans as well receive more state
> subsidies than other minorities. The exile leaders
> employ hyperbole not only in terms of the degree of
> empirical difference, but also concerning the more
> fundamental ethnic relationship in Tibet: in contrast
> to, say, Israel/Palestine, Tibetans have the same
> rights as Han, they enjoy certain preferential economic
> and social policies, and about half the top party
> leaders in the TAR have been ethnic Tibetans.
>
> Tibet has none of the indicia of a colony or occupied
> territory and thus has no relationship to self-
> determination, a concept that in recent decades has
> often been misused, especially by the US, to foster the
> breakup of states and consequent emiseration of their
> populations. A settlement between the Chinese
> government and Tibetan exile elites is a pre-condition
> for the mitigation of Tibetan grievances because absent
> a settlement, ethnic politics will continue to subsume
> every issue in Tibet, as it does for example, in Taiwan
> and Kosovo, where ethnic binaries are constructed by
> "ethnic political entrepreneurs," who seek to outbid
> each other for support.
>
> The riots in Tibet have done nothing to advance
> discussions of a political settlement between the
> Chinese government and exiles, yet a settlement is
> necessary for the substantial mitigation of Tibetan
> grievances. For Tibetan pro-independence forces, a
> setback to such efforts may have been their very
> purpose in fostering the riots. Tibetan pro-
> independence forces, like separatists everywhere, seek
> to counter any view of the world that is not ethnic-
> based and to thwart all efforts to resolve ethnic
> contradictions, in order to boost the mobilization
> needed to sustain their ethnic nationalist projects.
> They have claimed that China will soon collapse and the
> US will thereafter increase its patronage of a Tibetan
> state elite, to the benefit of ordinary Tibetans. One
> only has to look round the world at the many
> humanitarian catastrophes that have resulted from such
> thinking to project what consequences are likely to
> follow for ordinary Tibetans if the separatist fantasy
> were fulfilled.
>
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Did Dalai get the wrong picture on Tibet riots?
Venkatesan Vembu
Saturday, April 05, 2008
HONG KONG: Chinese internet users have gone to extraordinary lengths to disprove the Dalai Lama’s claim that the riots in Lhasa on March 14, which claimed several lives, were instigated by Chinese soldiers disguised as Buddhist monks.
At a press conference in New Delhi last week, the Dalai Lama made the serious allegation that Chinese soldiers had dressed as monks to convey the impression that Tibetans were instigating the riots. “A few hundred soldiers have been dressed like monks,” he said.
Though the Dalai Lama did not produce any evidence to support his allegation, it is believed he was referring to a widely-circulated photograph which showed uniformed men on a Lhasa street, some of them wearing burgundy-coloured robes (a typical Tibetan lama wear).
Behind them in the photograph are a few Tibetan hangers-on and a tricycle-rickshaw, a common mode of transport in Lhasa. In the absence of an explanatory context, the photograph appears to validate the Dalai Lama’s claim.
But Chinese internet users have collectively critiqued the photograph and effectively disproved the claim. For a start, they pointed out, going by the olive-green uniforms of the men in the photograph, they were not People’s Liberation Army soldiers, but belonged to the People’s Armed Police (PAP), a paramilitary force primarily responsible for law enforcement in China.
Others drilled down further to point out that under new uniform regulations in force since January 2005, armed police personnel sport a red shoulder patch. Since the men in the photograph did not have it the netizens concluded that the photograph must have been taken before January 2005.
The “cyber sleuths” then subjected other elements in the picture to more rigorous scrutiny. For instance, even the tricycle-rickshaws, which had a blue-coloured canopy, provided clues to when it was taken.
Starting October 2004, all pedal rickshaws in Lhasa were required to have a standard yellow-blue-red-green canopy. This meant, argued the netizens, the photographs were taken prior to that date.
Even the Tibetan hangers-on in the photo told a story: they were dressed in summer wear, as were the PAP personnel. In March 2008, when the riots occurred, it was cold in Lhasa.
In other words, the netizens were able to establish that the photograph on which the Dalai Lama appears to have relied was taken years ago.
-
The Hindu
India's online newspaper
Opinion
The question of Tibet
If you go by western media reports, the propaganda of the so-called ‘Tibetan government-in-exile’ in Dharamsala and the votaries of the ‘Free Tibet’ cause, or by the fulminations of Nancy Pelosi and the Hollywood glitterati, Tibet is in the throes of a mass democratic uprising against Han Chinese communist rule. Some of the more fanciful news stories, images, and opinion pieces on the ‘democratic’ potential of this uprising have been put out by leading western newspapers and television networks. The reality is that the riot that broke out in Lhasa on March 14 and claimed a confirmed toll of 22 lives involved violent, ransacking mobs, including 300 militant monks from the Drepung Monastery, who marched in tandem with a foiled ‘March to Tibet’ by groups of monks across the border in India. In Lhasa, the rioters committed murder, arson, and other acts of savagery against innocent civilians and caused huge damage to public and private property. The atrocities included dousing one man with petrol and setting him alight, beating a patrol policeman and carving out a fist-size piece of his flesh, and torching a school with 800 terrorised pupils cowering inside. Visual images and independent eyewitness accounts attest to this ugly reality, which even compelled the Dalai Lama to threaten to resign. There was violence also in Tibetan ethnic areas in the adjacent provinces of Gansu and Sichuan, which, according to official estimates, took an injury toll of more than 700. Western analyses have linked these incidents to the March 10 anniversary of the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising, non-progress in the talks between the Dalai Lama’s emissaries and Beijing, China’s human rights record, and the Beijing Olympic Games, which will of course be held as scheduled from August 8 to 24.
Recent accounts, however, express unease and sadness over the containment of the troubles, the ‘large-scale,’ if belated and politically slow, response by Beijing, and the ‘brutal ease’ with which the protests have been ‘smothered’. In another context, say Pakistan under Pervez Musharraf, such a response would have been called exemplary restraint. As evidence accumulates, the realisation dawns that it is too much to expect any legitimate government of a major country to turn the other cheek to such savagery and breakdown of public order. So there is a shift in the key demand made on China: it must ‘initiate’ a dialogue with the Dalai Lama to find a sustainable political solution in Tibet.
But this is precisely what China has done for over three decades. The framework of the political solution is there for all to see. There is not a single government in the world that either disputes the status of Tibet; or does not recognise it as a part of the People’s Republic of China; or is willing to accord any kind of legal recognition to the Dalai Lama’s ‘government-in-exile.’ This situation certainly presents a contrast to the lack of an international consensus on the legal status of Kashmir. Nevertheless, there remains a Tibet political question, represented by the ideology and politics of the Dalai Lama and the ‘independence for Tibet’ movement, and it has an international as well as a domestic dimension.
This is an era of unprecedented development for the Chinese economy, which has grown at nearly 10 per cent a year for three decades. Tibet itself is on an economic roll: it has sustained an annual growth rate of more than 12 per cent over the past six years and is now on a 13-14 per cent growth trajectory. A new politics of conciliation towards the Dalai Lama’s camp has been shaped by this era, and since 2002, six rounds of discussion have taken place between the representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. The former have stated that the Dalai Lama’s current approach is to “look to the future as opposed to Tibet’s history to resolve its status vis-À-vis China,” and that the crux of his ‘Middle Way’ approach is to “recognise today’s reality that Tibet is part of the People’s Republic of China … and not raise the issue of separation from China in working on a mutually acceptable solution for Tibet.”
The real problem arises from two demands pressed by the Dalai Lama. The first is his concept of ‘high-level’ or ‘maximum’ autonomy in line with the ‘one country, two systems’ principle. The Chinese government points out that this is applicable only to Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, and that the kind of autonomy that the Dalai Lama demanded in November 2005 cannot possibly be accommodated within the Chinese Constitution. Secondly, the 2.6 million Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), which constitutes one-eighth of China’s territory, form only 40 per cent of the total population of Tibetans in China. The Chinese government makes the perfectly reasonable point that acceptance of the demand for ‘Greater Tibet’ or ‘one administrative entity’ for all 6.5 million ethnic Tibetans means breaking up Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces, doing ethnic re-engineering, if not ‘cleansing’, and causing enormous disruption and damage to China’s society and political system. This demand too is ruled out, as any comparable demand to break up States in India would be.
Multi-ethnic India is no stranger to such challenges to its territorial integrity: just consider the armed insurgency challenges, in some cases with external fuelling, in Jammu & Kashmir and in several parts of the North-East. Although the United Progressive Alliance government has made some statements about the Tibet incidents that hew close to the Washington line, it will be pleased that the studied official Chinese response has been to highlight India’s “clear and consistent” stand on the status of Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. New Delhi has allowed too much latitude to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan discontents for their political activities on Indian soil, which go against the stand that they are not allowed “to engage in anti-China political activities in India,” a principle reaffirmed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in Washington on March 24. The time has come for India to use the leverage that comes with hosting the Dalai Lama and his followers since 1959 to persuade or pressure him to get real about the future of Tibet — and engage in a sincere dialogue with Beijing to find a reasonable, just, and sustainable political solution within the framework of one China.
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Facing Facts On Tibet
Louise Blouin MacBain 04.11.08, 6:00 AM ET
Forbes.com
The protests marking the 49th anniversary of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet have returned the attention of the world to the region and the question of its long-term relationship with China. These protests regrettably have brought with them the loss of life, emotionally charged exchanges between Tibetans and Chinese, and over the last week, a series of violent pro-Tibet protests in London and Paris disrupting the Olympic torch relay, the symbolic inauguration of the 2008 Beijing Games.
While this latest round of protests has further threatened to tarnish the image of the Games themselves, we must not allow this to take us away from the fundamental issue at hand--the work needed to be done to develop a solution for the status of Tibet within China, while fostering the conditions for peace and stability between the Tibetans and Chinese, now and into the future.
We have to ask, why is it so important to work toward this solution now, rather than wait another two or three or five years? What makes this moment so vital? I would argue that it is not simply because of the added political leverage gained from the Beijing Olympics. Indeed, this reality is removing us from reasonable and rational dialogue on the issue. Remember, His Holiness has not called for a boycott of the Games. In the end, however, the far broader threat to Tibetan culture as a result of globalization, economic expansion and migration is real.
His Holiness has stated that neither he nor his government were responsible for the March 10 protests. This statement raises the question as to the extent of his authority over a younger generation of the Tibetan independence movement--one that is less willing to follow the route of non-violence as part of a "Middle Way" approach. We must avoid a turn to violence and radicalism from these groups at all costs. We cannot afford another Northern Ireland or Palestine.
Since these protests, two sets of demands have been made. First, from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has called for renewed dialogue with China on the basis of cultural preservation and cultural autonomy for all Tibetans, both inside and outside of the Tibetan Autonomous Region--this has been described as "meaningful autonomy" and not independence.
Second, from the Chinese, in particular Premier Wen Jiabao, who while responding quite forcefully to the protests has said the "door of dialogue still remained open," on the condition that His Holiness renounces both his claims for Tibetan independence and violent political action. There also have been numerous calls from heads of state for renewed dialogue, most recently on April 9 from President Bush.
Taken at face value, both of these demands seem compatible--His Holiness has stated repeatedly that he stands neither for political independence nor for violence.
However, ambiguity appears to creep in when we look at the direct demands that make up the Middle Way, which were updated as recently as 2006 and call explicitly for the creation of Tibetan political institutions to govern all Tibetan populated areas within China, as opposed to specific demands concerning cultural protections. Taking this ambiguity into account, the restart of substantial negotiations between His Holiness and the Chinese is not a foregone conclusion.
While six meetings have taken place between the Tibetan Government in Exile and the Chinese government since 2002, none of these meetings has featured direct negotiation on key issues with His Holiness despite a request by the Chinese, nor have they resulted in any progress concerning the fundamental issue of the status of Tibet within China.
I believe that this lack of progress is due to unrealistic demands made by His Holiness as part of his proposal for "meaningful autonomy" that extends the reach of Tibetan governance far beyond the borders of the Tibetan Autonomous Region to apply to all Tibetan populated areas. This extension has been conveyed to me by both the Chinese government in a white paper on the Tibet issue, and in a recent letter received from New York Tibetan representative Tashi Wangdi. While protections for Tibetan culture and environment need to be created and economic opportunity given, these protections need to be both realistic and pragmatic.
Still, I remain convinced that substantial negotiation is possible if His Holiness directly engages the fundamental issues concerning Tibet. I am further convinced that His Holiness will find a willing and serious partner in negotiation with the Chinese.
Why do I believe this to be the case? As part of the mandate of our LTB Foundation and our Global Creative Leadership Summit and its platform, we have been in contact with the Chinese Minister of Information--now the current Minister of Culture--Cai Wu, who is directly involved in the Tibet issue.
In meetings and correspondence since last November, Cai Wu has indicated that China is willing to host serious negotiations with His Holiness, and to focus these negotiations on the preservation of a distinct Tibetan culture within a greater China. He has also indicated that throughout the previous negotiation process, invitations for direct talks with the Dalai Lama went unanswered, which I believe was due to the personal pain felt by His Holiness over Tibet. Our meeting with Cai Wu ended with an understanding that China would provide us with further information on its position regarding Tibet. Once we received this information on paper, we agreed that our foundation would reach out to His Holiness in an effort to renew a dialogue with the Chinese.
This proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Since June 2006 we have made numerous attempts to speak with His Holiness and to develop a working relationship with his representatives. The first attempt was in Petra, Jordan, where I was the guest of King Abdullah as part of a Nobel Laureates conference. There, our foundation was turned away by the representatives of His Holiness as we sought an audience. A second attempt was made immediately following my contact with the Chinese Minister of Information last November, to no avail.
Recently, in the wake of the March 10 protests, we have been able to make more substantial contact with his representatives and discussed the Tibet issue with them, but again failed to obtain an audience with His Holiness who we were told had a tightly booked schedule over the next months.
In the intervening months, it had become increasingly clear to me that China was making an investment in culture on a scale unlike any other in the world. Moreover, Wu told me that the Chinese people deeply regretted the Cultural Revolution and were doing their best to make amends. With this we can see that China places great importance on the role of culture within society. What does this mean in terms of Tibet? The Chinese have come to recognize the need for the preservation of Tibetan culture.
It is understandable that His Holiness might be reluctant to meet and be party to a direct negotiation process on the Tibet issue. After all, His Holiness only made first contact with the Chinese over this matter in 1978, some 19 years after his flight from Tibet into exile abroad. This is certainly an extremely difficult and delicate process where there is much fear, remorse and recrimination on both sides. But it is a step that must be taken.
Louise Blouin MacBain is chairman of the Louise T. Blouin Foundation and the New Globalization Platform, part of the Global Creative Leadership Initiative.
The following table represents the official political demands of the Tibetan Government in Exile as part of the "Middle Way" approach, last updated in 2006; and from the Chinese government white paper provided to our foundation on relation to the Tibet issue in 2007.
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Political Demands: People's Republic of China, Tibet Policy (2007)
1. The Dalai Lama must abandon his independence goal, stops his separatist activities.
2. He must recognize that Tibet is an inalienable part of China and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.
3. He must recognize that the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government of China.
Political Demands:Tibetan Government in Exile,
Middle Way Approach (2006)
1. Without seeking independence for Tibet, the Central Tibetan Administration strives for the creation of a political entity comprising the three traditional provinces of Tibet.
2. Such an entity should enjoy a status of genuine national regional autonomy.
3. This autonomy should be governed by the popularly elected legislature and executive through a democratic process and should have an independent judicial system.
4. As soon as the above status is agreed upon by the Chinese government, Tibet would not seek separation from, and remain within, the People's Republic of China.
5. Until the time Tibet is transformed into a zone of peace and non-violence, the Chinese government can keep a limited number of armed forces in Tibet for its protection.
6. The Central Government of the People's Republic of China has the responsibility for the political aspects of Tibet's international relations and defense, whereas the Tibetan people should manage all other affairs pertaining to Tibet, such as religion and culture, education, economy, health, ecological and environmental protection.
7. The Chinese government should stop its policy of human rights violations in Tibet and the transfer of Chinese population into Tibetan areas.
8. To resolve the issue of Tibet, His Holiness the Dalai Lama shall take the main responsibility of sincerely pursuing negotiations and reconciliation with the Chinese government.
Source, TGIE: The Middle-Way Approach: A Framework for Resolving the Issue of Tibet (2006).
Source, PRC: The 14th Dalai Lama and the Chinese Central Government’s Policy, a white paper on China's Tibet policy sent to the Louise T. Blouin Foundation from the Chinese Ministry of Information (2008).
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China
Dalai clique´s masterminding of Lhasa violence exposed
FOREIGN ASSISTANCE
On Feb. 15 to 17, the five organizations launched training programs on persons in charge of the movement activities in Dharamsala in northwest India, where the "Tibetan government-in-exile" was located. Four days later, they started a six-day campaign to recruit participants in the same place.
The "GCSMT" obtained financial assistance from the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) on Feb. 27 as the fund "for activists to deal with dangers."
According to the NED report, the foundation had granted 1.36 million U.S. dollars to the Dalai clique between 2002 and 2006. In2006 alone, it gave 85,000 dollars to the organizations such as the "TWA" and "GCSMT."
The Dalai clique investigated about 300 Tibetans who were smuggled across the border from China in February in a bid to collect information for planned attacks on the border ports or infiltration into China, the article said.
On March 10, after careful selection, 101 hard-core members setoff from Dharamsala to undrape the movement.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
March 10 is the anniversary of the so-called "Tibet uprising" in 1959. On the day 49 years ago, Lhasa had seen a bloody riot initiated by the Dalai clique. Rioters killed Pagbalha Soinam Gyamco, senior lama and a member of the preparation committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region, tied his body with a horse and dragged it for two kilometers.
The day, annually remembered by the Dalai clique, was a remembrance of violence. And history seemed to repeat.
The same day this year, a ceremony was held in Dharamsala to mark the event and the 14th Dalai Lama criticized in a statement that the Chinese government imposed "more severe repression upon Tibetans in Tibet", "trampled on human rights and limited religious freedom" while appreciating "Tibetan people's sincerity, courage and resolution."
Right after the ceremony, about 300 monks from Zhaibung Monastery tried to march into Lhasa downtown, and in the following days, monks from other temples in Lhasa also tried to demonstrate but were held back by police.
When the monks' efforts to spread unrest failed, violent rioters came. They torched shops and vehicles, attacked innocent passers-by on the streets and even ambulances on March 14.
Dalai clique´s masterminding of Lhasa violence exposed
WATCH VIDEO
Source: Xinhua | 03-30-2008 21:10
Special Report: 3.14 Tibet Riots
BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Xinhua was authorized to release a signed article Sunday to reveal how the Dalai Lama clique plotted and incited the Lhasa violence on March 14 which killed at least 18 civilians and one police officer.
The story by Yi Duo says it was untrue for the Dalai clique to claim that the riot was a "spontaneous peaceful protest" which the Dalai Lama has had nothing to do with. ?
AN INSIDER'S CONFESSION
An unnamed suspect in connection with the Lhasa violence has confessed to the police that the "security department" of the "Tibetan government-in-exile" asked him to hand around leaflets promoting the so-called "Tibetan people's uprising movement" to civilians and monks in Tibet, according to the article.
"The violence on March 14 was related to the instigation done by the 'security department' of the 'Tibetan government-in-exile'," the suspect said.
"For the sake of protecting myself, (the Dalai Lama clique) asked me not to participate in the demonstrations in person, just in charge of stirring people up," the suspect said.
"The beating, smashing, looting and burning were by no means peaceful demonstrations, and the deeds were inhuman," the suspect admitted. "If they (the Dalai Lama clique) wanted to follow the non-violence 'middle way', such violence should have never happened."
On the same day when violent mobs attacked innocent Lhasa civilians, a closed-door meeting was held by the Dalai Lama clique on how to enlarge the "achievements," the article said.
FOLLOW-UP PLOTS
The meeting finally decided to mobilize all monasteries in Tibet each with more than 100 lamas, especially those of the Yellow Sect in Tibetan Buddhism, and ask monks to take to the street and involve common Tibetans in the demonstrations. The meeting also plotted to launch continuous protests by various stages in Tibetan-inhabited areas.
Samdhong, "prime minister" of the "Tibetan government-in-exile," said at the meeting that they should seize the very rare chance of Beijing Olympics to make breakthroughs in that "Tibet cause", to pave the way for the Dalai Lama to "return" to Tibet and to achieve high autonomy in "Greater Tibet" and its goal of "abolishing" the existing management method on reincarnation of Tibetan living Buddhas.
The Dalai clique also entrusted the "ministry of finance" under the "government-in-exile" to "financially support the decisive battle against the Chinese government," the article said.
A day after the violence on March 14, the "Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC)", a hard line organization under the Dalai clique that openly preach violence, decided to "set up guerillas to infiltrate into Tibet and start armed struggles" at a meeting in Dharamsala, where the "Tibetan government-in-exile" was located, the article said.
They also drafted plans on recruitment, financing and purchasing weapons and planned to steal into Tibet through the China-Nepal border.
The "TYC" leaders said they are ready to "sacrifice another 100 Tibetans at least" to achieve their goal.
Besides the "TYC", other organizations under the Dalai Lama clique also sent people to Tibetan communities in India and Nepal, urging residents there to contact people in Tibet and other Tibetan-inhabited areas in China through telephone or e-mail and incite them, "in the name of Dalai Lama", to hold demonstrations following the Lhasa violence.
Cewang Rigzin, the "TYC" president, said at a meeting on March 20 that violence has "reached its goal" to "wake resistance force among people in Tibet and attract high-profile international attention to Tibet issue" but the struggle "will not stop and this incident is just the prelude of this year's fight."
INSTIGATION OF LHASA RIOT
The article detailed how the Dalai clique masterminded a so-called "Tibetan people's uprising movement" that led to the violence in Lhasa.
Five organizations under the "Tibetan government-in-exile", the "TYC", "Tibetan Women's Association (TWA)," "Students for a Free Tibet (SFT)," "National Democratic Party of Tibet (NDPT)" and "Gu-Chu-Sum Movement of Tibet (GCSMT)" announced the formal start of "Tibetan people's uprising movement" on Jan. 4 this year and founded a temporary preparation office in charge of coordination and financing, headed by Cewang Rigzin, according to the report.
They claimed that the movement is a "turning point on the history of Tibetan's struggle for freedom," the article said.
"They divided the movement into four stages," it said. The first was to recruit participants and promote the ideas of the movement. The second stage, or the action step, started on March 10, followed by the third one to organizing demonstrations across the world. The last one was to launch actions in the regions inhabited by Tibetan people inside China.
* Email Article
*
China
Countries react over Tibet riots
Source: CCTV.com | 03-22-2008 14:47
Special Report: 3.14 Tibet Riots
Senior officials in many countries have voiced their support for the Chinese government over the recent violence in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region. They also oppose the idea of politicizing the upcoming Olympics.
A spokesman for Mongolia's Foreign Ministry says his country adheres to the one-China policy and recognizes Tibet as an inalienable part of China.
Nepal's Foreign Ministry makes it clear that Tibet is an inseparable part of China. Nepal has expressed its appreciation of the Chinese government's commitment to peace, stability and progress.
Bangladesh's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed the country's solidarity with China over the Tibet issue. Bangladesh also conveys its wishes for the success of the Beijing Olympic Games, and opposes the idea of politicizing this sports event.
Kazakh Vice Foreign Minister, Nurlan Baiuzakovich Yermekbayev, says measures adopted by the Chinese government to defend Tibet's social stability is entirely China's internal affair.
The speaker of Kyrgyzstan's parliament, Adakhan Madumarov, says the Tibet issue is an internal affair of China. He also says Kyrgyzstan believes the Chinese government and people have the capacity to safeguard social stability in Tibet.
Tajik First Deputy Foreign Minister, Abdullo Yuldoshev, says Tajikistan strongly condemns the organizers and mobs that sparked the riots in Lhasa. Tajikistan firmly supports the lawful measures taken by the
Chinese government to maintain social stability, and opposes the idea of politicizing the Olympics.
Georgian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Grigol Vashadze, says his country believes the riots in Lhasa will not affect the Beijing Olympics and Georgia will participate in the Games as planned.
Syria condemns the recent acts of sabotage in Lhasa and expresses solidarity with China's aim to maintain security and stability in Tibet.
Fiji's Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says his country supports China's actions to deal with the riots in accordance with the rule of law. Bainimarama says it's necessary for China to take proper measures to safeguard national peace and stability.
Serbia has reiterated its support in principle of the one-China policy and respect for China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The Zambian government denounces the ferocity of the rioters in Lhasa, and hopes that stability will soon be restored. Zambia says it is in favor of all peace-loving countries taking part in the Beijing Olympic Games.
A Benin government spokesperson has strongly condemned the violence which was planned and instigated by the Dalai Lama clique. The spokesperson said the violence and the criminal acts by the separatists have clearly proved that the Dalai Lama clique's slogans proclaiming "peace" and "non-violence" are lies.
Several ambassadors from African countries to China have also sent messages to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, saying they uphold the one-China policy and support the Chinese government's efforts in safeguarding national unity and social stability. These African countries also say they oppose all actions attempting to politicize the Olympics.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has expressed its support for the necessary measures adopted by the Chinese government to stop criminal actions, and maintain stability in Tibet. The Organization says the Chinese government and people are capable of hosting a great Olympics for the whole world.
This article you can find on sumatiarya.nl page Voice of Dorje Shugden
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Singapore PM warns Olympic protests will have
'consequences' by angering Chinese people
SINGAPORE - Singapore's prime minister warned Friday
that recent protests along the Olympic torch relay
have angered the Chinese public and will create
"consequences" beyond the games themselves.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the people of
China are viewing the protests as an affront to their
country during what should be "China's coming-out
party, to celebrate its progress" and opening up to
the world.
"Whatever the intentions of the demonstrators, the
people of China believe they want to inflict maximum
humiliation on China and the Chinese people more than
the Chinese government," Lee said at a forum in
Singapore, according to a government statement.
The Olympic torch was met by major demonstrations in
San Francisco, London and Paris this week on its relay
around the world. Thousands of protesters angry at
China's human rights record, its harsh rule in Tibet
and its friendly ties with Sudan scuffled with police
and attempted to block the torch's passage.
Lee added that public outrage in China, especially
among the young, could be seen in the "virulent
anti-foreign sentiments" carried on Internet bulletin
boards, adding it was a pity the postings were in
Chinese and unintelligible to most in the West.
"Were they in the English language, young Americans
and Europeans would realize that these displays of
contempt for China and things Chinese will have
consequences in their lifetime, well beyond the
Olympic Games," Lee said. He did not elaborate.
Singapore, which is preparing to host the first Youth
Olympic Games in 2010, has said the Olympic torch
should be "respected as a symbol of peace and unity."
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
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Don’t disrupt torch run, says chief priest
KUALA LUMPUR (Malaysia): Politics should be kept out of the coming Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
In saying this yesterday, (Theravada) Buddhist Chief High Priest of Malaysia Venerable Reverend K. Sri Dhammaratana also urged Malaysians to refrain from interfering in the Olympic torch relay which is scheduled to take place here on Monday. (April 21)
“My request to Malaysians of all races and religions is to remain calm and to have a positive attitude. Let’s make the Olympic Games successful in the name of international peace. We should let compassion be our guiding light and non-violence be our way of life,” he said.
Taking a cue from the Dalai Lama, Sri Dhammaratana reiterated that there were different platforms for different issues.
“Some people are trying to turn the Olympics into a political game but as far as I know it is an international sports meet. We must try to understand and be aware of what the Olympic Games is all about. It’s a gamean occasion celebrated together in the true spirit of sports.
“While the torch is being carried in Malaysia, we should get together and radiate positive energy for the success of the games,” he said at the Maha Vihara temple in Brickfields yesterday.
Sri Dhammaratana said a special prayer would be held on Sunday at 9am to pray for peace in Tibet and the success of the Olympic Games.
“As a religious leader, I’m trying my best to influence the people to spread peace and pray with a sincere heart. I have invited Buddhist monks and other religious leaders in the country to join us in the simultaneous prayer.
“It’s also part of our duty to influence the monks in Tibet, whether Chinese, Tibetan, Thai or Japanese, to carry the message of peace.” he said.
He also said that those who had disrupted the relay in London, Paris and San Francisco had created an unhealthy environment.
“This can be due to a lack of understanding and their emotions. Being human beings we are all different and our emotions sometimes rule our actions.”
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MYTHS ABOUT TIBET?
Reassessing Tibet Policy
Written by A. Tom Grunfeld, Empire State College
Editors: Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS)
Key Points
Tibet and China have been intertwined since the 7th century in one form or another.
The Dalai Lama, now almost 65 years old, feels the pressure of time in his hopes to preserve Tibetan culture in his lifetime, making talks with Beijing and a compromise solution urgent.
U.S. policy works against a solution to this dilemma because of its unrealistic portrayal of China.
The flight of the 17th Karmapa Lama from Tibet to India on the eve of the millenium catapulted Tibet back into world headlines. This has created an opportunity for both China and the U.S. to reassess their policies toward Tibet.
Tibet’s status has been intertwined with China since the 7th century through marriages, wars, and treaties. Mongol conquests in the 13th century made Tibet part of a Mongol-ruled Chinese state, and four centuries later the ethnic Manchu Q’ing dynasty further incorporated Tibet into China. In 1912 the 13th Dalai Lama unilaterally declared independence but two years later indicated his willingness to sign a treaty granting Chinese “suzerainty” over both “Inner Tibet” and “Outer Tibet,” establishing direct rule over the former and leaving the latter autonomous. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reestablished strong central government in 1949, Tibet was regarded as politically “integral” with China but in fact so autonomous that Beijing insisted on an incorporation “treaty” to preempt any claims of independence. Yet the CCP refrained from stamping out feudalism and theocratic rule. Twice in the 1950s, Mao Zedong assured the Dalai Lama that China would make no further inroads against de facto Tibetan autonomy. This policy, however, applied only to Outer Tibet, which was later renamed the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Other ethnic Tibetan areas, known as Amdo and Kham (Inner Tibet), underwent political transformation.
This process of integration sparked rebellion, and minor insurrections in Kham/Sichuan turned into open revolt by 1956. Support soon came from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was eager to destabilize the communist government. China’s suppression of a 1959 revolt forced the Dalai Lama and 50-60,000 Tibetans into exile. Beijing then subjected the TAR to political and social integration, ending Lhasa’s autonomous rule. During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards, both Chinese and Tibetan, engaged in wholesale destruction of almost every religious building in Tibet, paralleling antireligious campaigns throughout China. From exile, the Dalai Lama oversaw refugee resettlement and guerrilla warfare—although he officially renounced all violence. CIA support encouraged insurgent Tibetans to continue their war for independence, but the CIA was more interested in harassing communist China than in promoting Tibetan independence. Following the 1971 visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the U.S. cut off its support to the Tibetan resistance. The Tibetan rebellion quickly dissipated; after 15 years, the Tibetans had been unable to create a sustainable, freestanding military force.
By the late 1970s, China began relaxing its grip on Tibet. In 1978 the Panchen Lama was released from detention, and he began championing the preservation of Tibetan culture. A new round of Dalai Lama-Beijing contacts resulted in several Tibetan-exile delegations visiting Tibet. After these talks faltered in the 1980s, the Dalai Lama decided to promote his cause internationally, believing that increased foreign pressure generated by his “Tibet Lobby” would force Beijing to renew serious negotiations. Rising international attention and continued unrest in Tibet sparked a policy debate within China. The moderates argued for more freedom for Tibetan cultural practices and the return of the Dalai Lama, while the hard-liners (many of them Tibetan governmental and party officials) urged ending ties to the Dalai Lama and repressing all expressions of Tibetan nationalism.
After the Panchen Lama’s sudden death in January 1989, the Dalai Lama was invited for religious funerary ceremonies in Beijing. Even though he was assured that there would be an opportunity for direct high-level talks, the Dalai Lama declined the invitation after his advisers objected to the continuing prohibition against his visiting Lhasa and pointed out that the international campaign was giving his cause increasing prominence. The decision not to go to Beijing and renew direct negotiations was probably the gravest error of his political life. He did, however, agree in 1992 with the Chinese leadership to recognize a 7-year-old boy from a nomad family as the reincarnation of the Karmapa Lama, and there was the suggestion that the Dalai Lama could assist in searching for the next Panchen Lama. But tensions escalated again in 1995 when the Dalai Lama (without first consulting Beijing) announced that a boy had been selected as the 11th Panchen Lama. The designee and his family were arrested, and Beijing enthroned its own candidate. Since then there has been no progress in Chinese-Dalai Lama relations.
U.S. policy has done little to help resolve the Tibet issue. Washington’s policy ignores Tibet’s complex history, is driven by domestic politics, and is inherently contradictory. While officially recognizing Tibet as part of China, the U.S. Congress and White House unofficially encourage the campaign for independence. "
"Problems with Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems
Internationalization of the Tibet issue has worsened the situation inside Tibet by strengthening hard-line elements.
The freedom to travel inside China has led to a huge influx of ethnic Chinese to urban centers in Tibet, and they now probably outnumber urban Tibetans.
China, unclear perhaps of how to deal with the Dalai Lama, has continued to erect roadblocks to serious negotiations.
In 1943, Washington declared that “...the Government of the United States has borne in mind the fact that the Chinese Government has long claimed suzerainty over Tibet...This Government has at no time raised a question regarding ...these claims.” In line with the policy of its Nationalist Chinese allies (the defeated Guomindang army that fled to Taiwan), the U.S. later officially recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. This position remains U.S. policy, and it is also the policy of both China and Taiwan.
Not until the cold war did Tibet become of interest to the U.S. government, which initiated secret talks with Tibetan dissidents in 1950 on the premise that Tibetans were fighting communism, not Chinese rule. Washington promised covert aid to the Tibetan dissidents if the Dalai Lama would leave China and publicly denounce Beijing. At that time, the Dalai Lama refused to leave Tibet, and the CIA threw its covert support to a burgeoning guerrilla movement. In 1959 the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, and he immediately began receiving an annual U.S. stipend of $180,000 for himself and another $1,550,000 for his cause. Covert CIA funding presumably ended in 1971.
After 1971 U.S. interest in Tibet waned as relations with China warmed, but mounting pressure from the Tibet Lobby complicated the policy environment. In the late 1980s the Tibet Lobby found a receptive hearing with the U.S. Congress, whose members were angry at China over nuclear proliferation, trade imbalances, prison labor, and human rights. Hearings were held, and amendments were added to bills condemning “human rights violations” and calling Tibet an “occupied country.” In September 1987, when the Dalai Lama was in the U.S. promoting the Tibet Lobby, the first demonstrations in three decades broke out in Lhasa. Undoubtedly expressions of U.S. “support” helped spur on the demonstrators, as Tibetans wrongly interpreted congressional testimony and nonbinding congressional resolutions as evidence of a changing U.S. policy. But official U.S. policy remained unaltered.
Pursuant to its early alliance with the Nationalists/Taiwan and to its subsequent relations with Beijing, Washington never recognized Tibetan independence (or the Dalai Lama’s “government-in-exile,” despite covert CIA support). But the vociferous U.S. opposition to communist China together with the rising popularity of the Dalai Lama’s cause pressured the White House to open some space in its public diplomacy for the Tibetan issue, resulting in yet another irritant in Sino-U.S relations. Washington’s failure to articulate a consistent and definitive policy has displeased all sides: anti-China politicians, the Tibet Lobby, and the Chinese. Moreover, Washington’s ambivalence and equivocations have proved harmful to resident Tibetans.
During the 1980s, CCP moderates paved the way for increased usage of the Tibetan language, the reconstruction of religious buildings (with more temples in some regions now than before 1951), and the encouragement of Tibetan culture. But though CCP officials were willing to solidify these policies with the Tibetan pontiff, their inability to consummate a deal with Tibet’s other religious leadership, the continuing popular protests, and the escalating China-bashing in the U.S. strengthened the hand of CCP hard-liners.
U.S. public diplomacy skirts the independence issue, focusing on criticism of human rights abuses. Yet recent concessions and overtures to the Tibet Lobby are seen as evidence by CCP hard-line factions that Washington’s ultimate goal is to fracture China. Such initiatives as the establishment of Radio Free Asia (RFA), the 1998 appointment of a special coordinator for Tibet (a State Department employee who works part-time on Tibet and whom China will never allow into Tibet or to play any role in Chinese-Tibetan affairs), and invitations to the Dalai Lama to visit the White House have served to strengthen the anti-Dalai Lama, anti-U.S. positions of the hard-line CCP faction.
In recent years, this hard-line CCP faction has fostered increased repression in Tibet, outlawed pictures of the Dalai Lama, encouraged increased ethnic Chinese migration into Tibet, tightened security in monasteries, obstructed religious practices, and forced monks and Tibetan officials to undergo “patriotic” retraining. As a result, there has been rising animosity toward Chinese rule and increased expressions of Tibetan nationalism—including some terrorism, such as bombs in Lhasa. Indeed, these anti-Tibetan policies precipitated the flight of the 17th Karmapa, a 14-year-old boy, who had previously expressed loyalty to the Chinese state.
Restrictions on Tibetan culture, especially religion, were what led to the 1964 denunciation of Chinese rule by the Panchen Lama and his subsequent 14-year detention. Once more, repressive practices, which have been fueled in part by ill-considered U.S. practices, alienated a prominent cleric and precipitated his flight to India. In the offing, there remains the possibility that the CCP moderates can use this unfortunate development to illustrate the bankruptcy of the hard-line approach.
Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations
The U.S. must recognize and acknowledge the major advances in personal freedoms that the vast majority of Chinese citizens now enjoy and must place human rights complaints in the larger context of current Chinese society.
Washington, and especially Congress, must end its knee-jerk China bashing and portrayal of China as a major threat to the U.S.
The U.S. must support and encourage those officials in China who recognize the problems that China has had with some of its ethnic minorities and are willing to work cooperatively to maintain the cultural integrity of the Tibetan people.
Tibetan Buddhism
There are four religious teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, and the distinctions between them can sometimes be confusing. The largest, and most recent, is the Gelug (Yellow Hat), of which the Dalai Lama is the leader. The others (sometimes referred to collectively as Red Hat), in order of their membership, are the Nyingma (the oldest), Kagyu (the order with the Karmapa Lama, also known as the Black Hat Lama, and the Sharmapa Lama, also known as the Red Hat Lama), and Sakya. There are also numerous suborders. Their theological similarities are greater than their differences.
There is no official hierarchy of lamas. The Dalai Lama is the head of only one school, but he is considered by almost all Tibetans to be their foremost spiritual leader, although that does not mean they will all automatically obey every one of his instructions. Moreover, until 1959, he was also the theocratic head of the Tibetan government.
The Panchen Lama heads a Gelug Monastery (Tashilhumpo) in Tibet's second largest city, Shigatse, and is generally considered the second most important Tibetan cleric. The Karmapa Lama is often considered the third most influential lama.
The departure of the Karmapa Lama should spur Washington to reevaluate the failures of its ambiguous policy approach. It is time—after a long history of CIA betrayal, congressional grandstanding, and White House pandering to China bashers—for the U.S. to implement policies that truly help resident Tibetans.
Sadly, the spiraling success of the international campaign for Tibet has led to a proportional deterioration in cultural conditions for the people of the TAR, since Tibet’s high profile has bolstered the authority of the Chinese hard-liners. Moreover, publicity from outside Tibet (especially Tibetan RFA broadcasts) persuades some Tibetans that the U.S. supports their cause and encourages them to continue their brave but futile struggles against Chinese rule.
Time is short. The Dalai Lama is 65; his death would rob Tibetans of the only person with sufficient authority to negotiate a deal with Beijing. In the absence of a negotiated solution, current Chinese policies are allowing a mass migration of sojourners into the TAR to the point where they may already outnumber the indigenous population in the urban areas, where they congregate. The Dalai Lama, like his predecessor, is willing, as he declared in April 1999, to “use my moral authority with the Tibetan people so they renounce their separatist ambitions.” He feels that autonomy would be the “best guarantee that Tibet’s culture will be preserved.”
China, including the TAR, has undergone dramatic changes. Tibet has roads, schools, hospitals, a burgeoning middle class, internet cafes, karaoke bars, discos, and some 100,000 tourists annually. Religion is widely practiced. There are thousands of Tibetan officials, CCP members, and military recruits in Tibet. Indeed, many of the most ardently anti-Dalai Lama officials are Tibetan. To be sure, restrictions on religious practice continue, institutional religion has eroded badly, the average income and literacy rate are the lowest in China, and animosity between ethnic groups is growing. There are as many as a thousand political prisoners, mostly clergy who peacefully demonstrated against Chinese rule. Clearly, the political conjuncture in Tibet is far more complex than either the Tibet Lobby or Chinese propaganda portrays.
Although it is important to condemn human rights abuses, Washington must also acknowledge the significant gains in personal freedoms for the vast majority of China's citizens. The Dalai Lama’s public pronouncements have become more conciliatory recently; an indication that he is reaching out to moderate officials, who while apparently not directing policy regarding Tibet, are still in the government. The U.S. must do the same: support the moderate elements in the Chinese government by portraying Tibet in a more realistic fashion, by inviting Tibetan officials to visit Washington, and by not pandering to the Tibet Lobby.
The events of the past decade have demonstrated that public diplomacy, international hoopla, and the involvement of the world’s governments, especially the United States, have worsened conditions for resident Tibetans. More realistic policies can help bring about a peaceful resolution of the Tibet issue, which is in the interests, and to the benefit, of Tibetans, Chinese, and, ultimately, the whole world.
A. Tom Grunfeld is a professor of history at SUNY/Empire State College. He is the author of The Making of Modern Tibet (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe Inc., 1996).
* A shorter and somewhat different version of this article appeared in Current History, September 1999.
Sources for More Information
Organizations
There are no neutral organizations pertaining to Tibet. The numerous organizations concerned with Tibet are openly anti-Chinese and serve largely as propaganda agencies for the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile. Human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, focus attention on the individuals who are indeed victims of human rights abuses, but since this repression is highly selective and not universal, their reports distort the overall picture of what is going on inside Tibet."
The above should provide an outline of the problems and where some of the problems and misconceptions are arising from, i.e. the American Administration are not innocent in promoting dissent.
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Don't praise hypocrisy
It is disappointing that the Star Two on April 15 reproduced a Los Angeles Times article which is a highly biased misrepresentation of the Tibetan situation. It is clear that the Dalai Lama is not a simple Buddhist monk as he has styled himself in the title of his book.
Unlike the Buddha, who gave up a kingdom for spiritual pursuits, the Dalai Lama wants to be the supreme leader running Tibet, deciding on their education, cultural practices and way of life. When he was in charge in the 1950s, slavery was prevalent in Tibet, with the rich noblemen and religious institutions owning all the wealth of the country. Serfs had no education and no future.
It is a wonder how those in the United States who champion liberty and human rights can support someone who wishes to rule over serfs, both as king and god. How can Americans whose Constitution clearly separates the powers of state from religion unashamedly support those who are pursuing the very opposite?
The picture of well-nourished monks and well-kept temples in Tibet are testimony of the support the Chinese government showers on the Tibetan population. A poor society like Tibet is not able to maintain institutions like the Potala and the very large number of monks requiring upkeep. Yet instead of pursuing meditation and goodness, these monks then lead a riot, attacking passers-by, burning shops and schools, and end up killing the innocent. Which part of the Buddhist scriptures are these monks following?
If the Dalai Lama is a man of peace, why does he not restrain his violent supporters and loudly condemn their actions? If he indeed accepts Chinese rule over Tibet, why does he keep meeting American and European politicians?
If he indeed supports the Beijing Olympics, why does he encourage demonstrations against the Olympic torch run? How can the press praise such hypocrisy?
Together with pictures of Tibetan temples and monks in China, pictures of riot police and a bloodied monk in Nepal are printed. Isn't this a crude attempt at misrepresenting the conduct of the Chinese police? After the looting and massacre in Lhasa, security officers seeking to restore peace and arrest the guilty are deemed to be conducting a crackdown.
On the other hand, in Los Angeles in 1995, after the Rodney King riots, the police department was said to be restoring order and normality! Is this fair and objective reporting?
Is is highly inappropriate to reproduce such a provocative article on Tibet just six days before the Olympic torch is due to pass through Kuala Lumpur. Tibetan demonstrators in London and Paris had physically attacked flame carriers, even targeting a young girl in a wheelchair. We should not make the task of our Malaysian security personnel and flame carriers more difficult.
Dr Ong Hean Teik,
Penang, Malaysia.
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French senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon comments on Tibet issue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNqfFJRJj0o
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Published on Monday, April 14, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/14/8287/
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The Hypocrisy and Danger of Anti-China Demonstrations
by Floyd Rudmin
We hear that Tibetans suffer “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide”. But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.
When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.
The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not “demographic aggression” but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing “cultural genocide” but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?
And as everyone knows but few dare say, “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” can be applied most accurately to Israel’s settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don’t wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.
The Chinese Context
The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.
Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.
Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.
In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.
China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.
There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.
China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.
Historical Claims
National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China’s claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.
Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for Québec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.
Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.
Danger of Demonstrations
These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.
Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today’s demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.
Conclusion
The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.
The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.
Floyd Rudmin can be contacted by [email protected]
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March 26, 2008
Why They Hate China
Well, you have to hate someone…
by Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12585
China’s continuing crackdown on Tibetan pro-independence protesters is a big, big issue here in San Francisco. Why, just the other day, I was coming out my front door, and there was one of my neighbors – a very nice woman in her fifties, albeit an archetypal limousine liberal, typical of the breed. So typical that she might almost be mistaken for a living, breathing, walking, talking cliché. She hates George W. Bush and the neocons because she’s against the (Iraq) war, but she’s eager to “liberate” Darfur – and, lately, Tibet. That morning, as she earnestly informed me, she was on her way to a meeting of the Board of Supervisors (our town council) to exhort them to vote for a resolution condemning the Chinese government’s actions and calling for “freedom” for Tibet. What she doesn’t realize, and doesn’t want to know, is that she and the neocons – the very ones who brought us the Iraq war – are united on the Tibet issue. I tried, in vain, to point this out to her, but she just shook her head, cut the conversation short, and was on her way…
As it turned out, the supervisors voted for a meaningless, toothless resolution, stripped of provocative rhetoric, much to the dismay of the far-lefties who argued for a stronger statement. The initiative for this effort was made by supervisor Chris Daly, an obnoxious left-liberal with delusions of grandeur, whose pose of self-righteousness is both grating and characteristic of his sort.
Prior to the vote on the Daly resolution, which was vociferously supported by the supposedly pacifistic supporters of the Dalai Lama, the Chinese consulate was… firebombed. This is what the War Party would like to do to China.
Fortunately, there are a number of restraining factors that get in the way: in the meantime, however, our preening politicians demagogue the China issue,and none so brazenly as Speaker of the House NancyPelosi, my congressional representative, who is merely Chris Daly writ large. Traveling all the way to India, at taxpayers’ expense, Madam Speaker visited with the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala and announced that if Americans don’t speak out against Beijing’s repression in Tibet “we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.”
Pelosi is a longtime opponent of Beijing – not just the Chinese government, but China itself. Pelosi and the unions she depends on for political support despise all things Chinese for the simple reason that China, today, is more capitalist than the U.S. – in spite of the Chinese Communist Party’s ostensible commitment to Marxist ideology. Thinly veiled racist-chauvinist bilge is routinely directed at the Chinese people by union bosses and right-wing paleo-protectionists, who stupidly claim that the “chinks” (or, as John McCain would put it, the “gooks”) are stealing “American jobs” – as if Americans have a hereditary right to the very best salaries on earth, a “right” that doesn’t have to be earned by competitive business practices but is conferred on them by virtue of their nationality. Like hell it is.
Lucrative trade and cultural exchanges between China and California, as well as the fact that many Chinese in her congressional district have continuing ties to the mainland, have – so far – failed to deter Pelosi and her fellow Know-Nothings: politics, as they used to say during the Cultural Revolution in China, is in command.
These Sinophobic protests, engineered behind the scenes by leftist union bosses and God knows who else, are focused on the passing of the Olympic torch, which is slowly but surely making its way to Beijing, where the games are scheduled to be held Aug. 8-24. Here in the Bay Area, activists in the “Free Darfur” movement announced they were mounting demonstrations urging China to “extinguish the flames of genocide” in Darfur in San Francisco on April 9, the day the flame passes through the city.
The hosting of the Olympic Games in Beijing is the focus of much pride in China, seen by the people as well as the ruling caste as symbolic of the nation’s arrival in modernity. As such, the worldwide protests and political posturing of preening politicians – from Pelosi to Nicolas Sarkozy – are bitterly resented and have been met with increasingly shrill denunciations by the Chinese state-controlled media – a sentiment that probably understates popular resentment of Western criticism in the Chinese “street.”
I know we are supposed to believe that the vast majority of the Chinese people are groaning under the weight of Commie oppression and sympathize (albeit silently) with the downtrodden Tibetans, but that is hardly the case. Indeed, the exact opposite is closer to the truth. Every time the West gets up on its high horse and lectures the Chinese government about its lack of “morality,” the tide of anti-Western Chinese nationalism rises higher.
We saw this when the U.S. “accidentally” bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during Clinton’s Balkan War of Aggression, and again when that American spy plane went down over Hainan island. In Beijing today, they are worried about the upcoming Olympic celebration, which will provide a platform for a wide variety of groups – including ultra-nationalist Chinese students, whose street antics have augured internal regime change in the past, and could do so again. “They are worried about a larger number of things and they are worried about keeping the lid on,” according to Arnold Howitt, a management specialist who oversees crisis-management training programs for Chinese government officials at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The same Associated Press article cites an unnamed “consultant” to the Games, who avers:
“‘Demonstrations of all kinds are a concern, including anti-American demonstrations,’ said the consultant, who works for Beijing’s Olympic organizers and asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.”
Any indications that Beijing is compromising Chinese pride and honor by appeasing the West are likely to be met by demonstrations that are both anti-American and anti-government – initiated, once again, by Chinese students, who have often been the agents of political transformation. Remember the Red Guards? Mao used them to initiate his own “Cultural Revolution,” but was forced to rein them in when they started talking about overthrowing the Chinese state.
The memory of that dark and chaotic era haunts China’s contemporary rulers, threatening to spoil their dream of a thoroughly modernized industrial powerhouse that is both the forge and the financial capital of the world economy. The Beijing Olympics represent the entry of China onto the world stage as a first-class power, right up there with its former adversaries: the U.S., Europe, and the former Soviet Union. A Chinese nationalist cannot be faulted for seeing the organized campaign to spoil that debut as a deliberate – and unforgivable – insult.
Viewed from this perspective – the perspective, that is, of the average citizen of China – the very idea of Tibetan independence might easily be seen as a rather obvious attempt to humiliate Beijing and remind it of its “proper” (i.e., subordinate) place in the global scheme of things.
After all, what if Chinese government leaders constantly reminded the world that the American Southwest was stolen from Mexico? Imagine the Chinese and Mexican ambassadors to the U.S. demanding independence, for, say, California – or better yet, its return to Mexican sovereignty! Shall the Olympics be forever barred from Puerto Rico, which was forcibly incorporated into the U.S. “commonwealth” in the invasion of 1898?
Of course not. Yet the Americans and their international amen corner are daring to criticize China for preserving its own unity and sovereignty. It’s a double standard made all the more insufferable by the self-righteous tone of the anti-China chorus, whose meistersingers are mainly concerned with celebrating their own moral purity.
Yes, Tibet was forcibly incorporated into the Communist empire of the Han, but this was just an episode in the long history of Sino-Tibetan relations – for the greater part of which the Tibetans held the upper hand. The Tibetan empire, at its height, extended from northern India to the Mongolian hinterlands and came at the expense of the conquered Chinese and Uighurs. It fell apart due to a ruinous civil war. A key factor in this complex narrative is that Mongol hegemony over China was greatly aided by the Tibetans, whose conversion of the Mongol nobility to Buddhism legitimized Mongol rule. Today, pro-Beijing historians point to this period as proof that Tibet has “always” been a part of China proper, yet the truth is that both were slaves to the Mongols – the Tibetans as their collaborators, the Chinese as their helots. (Underscoring Mongol contempt for their Chinese subjects was an edict forbidding intermarriage between Mongol and Chinese, although no such barrier to Mongol-Tibetan congress was imposed.) With Buddhism as the state religion, Tibetan priests, including the Dalai Lama, became the avatars of Mongol rule.
In short, the popular narrative of the pacifistic Buddhist Tibetans as the good guys and the Han Chinese as the bad-guy aggressors is the stuff of pure myth, pushed by union propagandists, lefty Hollywood do-gooders, and trendy sandal-wearing Western camp followers of the Dalai Lama, who has become a secularized yet “spiritual” substitute for Mother Theresa.
If the Chinese are wrong to hold on to their province of Tibet, then Lincoln was wrong to insist that the South stay in the Union – and we ought to immediately either grant the American Southwest (and California) independence, or else give it all back to the Mexicans.
The same goes for Taiwan – China’s rulers are no more likely to give up their claim to that island than Lincoln was inclined to let the Confederacy hold on in, say, Key West, Fla.
China is an adolescent giant: clumsy, unused to exerting its will beyond its borders, and wracked by self-doubt. Emerging into the company of world powers, it is thin-skinned – like any adolescent – and prone to wild mood gyrations. During the 1960s and ’70s, the Chinese were in a distinctly bad mood as they wrestled with the ghosts and demons unleashed by Mao. The triumph of the “modernizers” over the ultra-left Maoists in the 1980s signaled a new mood of optimism and inaugurated an era of unrivaled economic growth. The regime sanctified China’s journey down the “capitalist road” by citing the reformer Deng Tsiao-ping’s most famous “Communist” slogan: “To get rich is glorious!” Ayn Rand meets Chairman Mao (or, rather, Confucius) – and the result is capitalism-on-steroids.
That’s why, in spite of the sclerotic Marxoid ideology that still reins in and retards the natural entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people, China is moving forward by leaps and bounds. That’s also why comrade Pelosi and her union boss buddies have launched this odious Sinophobic hate campaign – because “their” jobs and sense of entitlement are going up in smoke. For decades, the U.S. government has preached the virtues of free enterprise and urged formerly Communist nations to adopt the free market – and now that the Chinese have taken them up on their offer, Western politicians are attacking them! The closer China has moved toward our own system – relaxing totalitarian controls over the economy and allowing a far greater degree of ideological diversity than was possible during the Maoist era – the more hostile the U.S. government has become. Nixon went to China at the height of the Cultural Revolution, where he sat next to Madam Mao during a command performance of The Red Detachment of Women. These days, however, as China stakes its claim to a proportionate share of the world market – and Chinese investors fund the U.S. debt
– the resentment and growing hostility of the Americans is all too palpable.
Why do politicians of Pelosi’s ilk join hands with neoconservatives in a concerted campaign to antagonize China, and even threaten sanctions and possible military action when the occasion gives rise to the opportunity?
To begin with, China’s is a success story, and there’s nothing that attracts opprobrium like success, unless it’s success of the wrong color – in this case, yellow. A crude racist collectivism of a specifically anti-Asian character has long been a tradition of the War Party in this country: see the anti-Japanese Dr. Seuss cartoons from the World War II era for a particularly vivid example. Yes, he was attacking the “Japs,” but to Americans, it’s all the same Yellow Peril.
This kind of sentiment is easily invoked in America, and don’t tell me Pelosi and her ideological confreres aren’t aware of it – yes, even in “liberal” San Francisco, where anti-Asian sentiment is part of the city’s history. Never mind the first black president, or the first female president – what I’m waiting for is the first chief executive of Asian-American descent. I’m not, however, holding my breath…
Relations with China are cloudy, at best, and those may very well be war clouds gathering on the horizon. The reason is that Sinophobia is a point of unity between the Left and the Right: the union of the Weekly Standard and the AFL-CIO, and perhaps even the majority of my paleoconservative friends, who quail before the rising Chinese giant and see it as a potential threat on account of its sheer scale – a third of the world’s population, and a land-mass that rivals our own. Surely such a stirring titan will knock us out of the way as he takes his place at the center of the world stage.
This reflects a fundamental error on the part of many conservatives, as well as liberals of the more statist persuasion. They fail to understand that there are no conflicts of interest among nations as long as their relations are governed by the market, that is by mutually beneficial trade agreements voluntarily entered into. Ludwig von Mises said it far better than I could ever manage, and I’ll leave my readers to Mises’ ministrations on this abstruse but important subject.
Suffice to say here that our relations with China on the economic front are a benefit to American consumers – that is, to all of us. They enable us to buy inexpensive quality products and keep the cost of living down. Protectionists who argue that “they” are “destroying American jobs” are simply arguing for higher prices – ordinarily not a very popular cause, and especially not these days.
Free trade is the economic precondition for a peaceful world and the logical corollary of a non-interventionist foreign policy. If goods don’t cross borders, then armies soon will – a historical truism noted by many before me, and with good reason. Let it be a warning to all those anti-free trade, antiwar types of the Right as well as the Left – you’ll soon be jumping on the War Party’s bandwagon when it comes China’s turn to play the role of global bogeyman. The way things are going, that day may come soon enough.
Finally, a word or two about this nonsensical demand, raised by the “Save Darfur” crowd, that China must somehow “extinguish the flames of genocide” supposedly carried out by the government of Sudan. What does China have to do with Sudan and its government? Well, you see, the Chinese have oil interests in the region, that is, they are engaged in competition with Western oil companies in opening up new fields – and, well, that just isn’t permissible.
The Chinese, we are told, have a moral responsibility to either pressure the Sudanese to let up on Darfur, or else abandon their Sudanese assets. As if Sudan were a Chinese colony, and the Sudanese authorities mere sock-puppets of Beijing. A more arrogant and self-serving argument would be hard to imagine. Presumably Western interests will fill the vacuum left by this spontaneous display of Chinese moral rectitude – and that alone should tell us everything we need to know about what’s behind the “Save Darfur” bloviators and their high-horse moralizing.
If our professional do-gooders of the “progressive” persuasion are so concerned about the fate of Darfur, let them campaign for the granting of mass asylum to the survivors of this latest African catastrophe. Give them sanctuary and green cards, but keep U.S. troops out of Africa, specifically out of Darfur – and get off Beijing’s back.
Like Russia, China is awakening from the long Leninist nightmare, albeit less traumatically, and with greater prospects for full recovery. However, it wouldn’t take much to push it back into a revival of neo-Maoism – or worse – and a new dark age triggered by an external threat. A resurgence of Chinese ultra-nationalism in response to Western pressure – and the specter of U.S.-sponsored separatism – does not augur well for the cause of world peace. As is so often the case, we are creating the very
enemies we fear, empowering and arming them ideologically. We are, in this sense,
our own worst enemies.
~ Justin Raimondo
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The human realm is a place of suffering.
It will never change.
Be fortunate that you have access to the dharma.
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Xuan Di April 14th, 2008 5:12 pm
I am a Chinese oversea student, belonging to a minority group, Hui. What the author (Floyd Rudmin) comments about the affirmative actions from the Chinese government are all what I have experienced. And last Saturday, I also got to know that in Tibet, the medical care is completely free for the Tibetan until 2003. And the medical insurance system is introduced since then. And it covers all residence in Tibet. This is a special affirmative action which is even not shared by the other minority groups, not to mention the Hans.
(detail about the insurance system: translated from
http://www.xzlwq.gov.cn/art/Article/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=323
Now for average resident in Tibet, they pay 60 RMB very year, and the government pay 140 RMB for their insurance. For preschooling children, students at any education level, they pay 30RMB, the rest covered by the government. Disabled, low income people, orphans and widow without children don’t need to pay for the insurance. Women above 60, men above 65 pay for the insurance only once, and then they will be covered for the rest of their lives.
Just for comparison: people from rural areas in the rest of China gets 20RMB from their provincial governments. People from urban areas in the rest of China covers their own insurance, either by the companies/institutes they work in or by themselves.)
In primary school education, Since 1984, children from rural areas go to schools for free, and their food and living costs are also covered by the government. This policy is also unique to Tibet, and in the rest of China, if a kid is from rural area, the benefit (s)he gets is just paying less than one with a urban hukou.
Not many Chinese knows about these affirmative actions, I am really joyfully surprised to hear a foreigner commenting on it.
The languages about the Tibetan riot from the comments on some Chinese websites by average citizens have been extremely strong. The author’s worry is justified, and I sincerely hope the resentment is temporary.
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frudmin April 15th, 2008 3:27 am
I (Floyd Rudmin) have no conflicts of interest vis-a-vis China. Neither my department nor my faculty has any ties to Chinese universities that I am aware of, and I certainly have not participated in any China exchanges. I have been to China once, in 2004, for one week, in Beijing, for the International Congress of Psychology. I know one graduate student at the University of Nanjing, whom I met at a Theoretical Psychology conference in Toronto last year, whom I asked to fact-check my statements about currency, schooling, and university admissions. My topic of research is minority relations to the dominant majority. Two major papers and bibliography are online at:
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~culture/rudmin.htm
http://www.anthroglobe.info/
My motivation for writing against the current anti-China campaign is that these demonstrations cannot conceivably result in an independent Tibet (which not even the Dalai Lama is seeking) but could result in the complete destruction of Tibetans. History has shown that other nations have destroyed their minorities when they are perceived to be a threat. China is a very old nation, but it is also a brand new nation when it comes to the experience of mass nationalism. People are now playing with dynamite, in my opinion.
Claims that China has been doing “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” are simply not substantiated by the facts. China has about 5 million Tibetans and about 1000 million Han Chinese. If there were, in fact, a five decades policy to displace Tibetans and destroy their culture, that would have been complete by now. Complete.
Commentators in this discussion (www.commondreams.org) repeat over and over that China has been doing bad things to Tibetans. But what are the specifics? For example, we know that the Nazis fired all of the Jewish minority from their jobs, made them wear the Star of David, then deported them, then murdered them en mass. We know that the Ottomans forced the Armenians into death marches. We know that Americans used Blacks as slaves and made war on the Indian tribes. We know that Canadians forced Native Peoples into small reserves and tried to destroy their languages and religions. We know that Israelis take Palestinian land and destroy their homes and cut down their orchards. What are the specifics of the supposed cultural aggression against the Tibetans? Has China done any of these kinds of culture oppression to the Tibetans? Is China doing any of these things now?
As far as I can tell from my limited knowledge of this, the Buddhist monasteries were the feudal lords and landowners in Tibet, and with the arrival of communism, they lost that status, tried to rebel, fled to India, where they agreed to serve in US operations against China. In this, they are like the White Russians fleeing into diaspora following the 1917 communist revolution in Russia. Similarly, there is a diaspora of Cuban exiles from Castro’s 1959 revolution. And there is a diaspora of Iranian royalists following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. All revolutions result in a diaspora of the losers. The diaspora from the American Revolution were called Loyalists, and they moved to Canada. My ancestor, Asa Webster, was one of them, moving from New Hampshire to what is now Brockville, Ontario. In three or four generations, these kinds of exiles settle down, inter-marry, and forget their historic quarrels and claims.
Please look at the facts of reality and think before becoming politically passionate. Judge your actions not by your own good intentions but by the possible consequences of your actions. Put a priority on correcting the abuses of your own government for which you have moral responsibility.
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http://lojongmindtraining.com/Editorial.aspx
Editorial on the Situation in Tibet
In view of the extremely one-sided media coverage of the present situation in Tibet, and since this site is visited by many Tibetan Buddhists supportive of Tibetan independence, I feel compelled to provide an alternative point of view. I do so as a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner of many years' standing who has traveled extensively in Tibet and in the ethnically Tibetan areas of Western China, but who as a Tai Chi practitioner has also spent much time in China proper.
I try to avoid politics as much as possible on this site, for obvious reasons. If I address the subject here it is not because I believe politics and religion should mix, but precisely because they have unfortunately become mixed and I would feel derelict in my moral duty if I did not attempt to separate them.
Let me start by viewing the situation from the point of view of Tibetan Buddhism. The whole idea of Tibetan Buddhism, as it has been taught to me, is that freedom and compassion are what remain after we have released all attachment to illusions such as 'self', 'other', 'my religion', 'my culture', 'my ethnic/linguistic/socioeconomic group', and so on. Any Tibetan who believes that there is any fundamental distinction between him/herself and the Han Chinese or Muslim shopkeeper next door, let alone uses such a distinction to justify attacks on others, has completely missed the point and 'Brought the God down to the level of a Demon', as the proverbs say, and it is our responsibility as Western Buddhists to recognize this and point it out - just as it is the responsibility of all Jews to point out abuses of power by the State of Israel, for Christians to dissociate themselves from churches that abuse others in the name of Jesus, and for Moslems to dissociate themselves from those who use the name of Allah to justify violence. Anyone who does not wish exactly the same good for every single person currently residing in Tibet, regardless of ethnic background, native language, or religion, or at least strongly aspire to do so, is not a sincere Buddhist.
It may be objected that this is asking a lot of the Tibetans. It is asking a lot, just as it is asking a lot of Christians that they 'love their enemies', as Jesus Christ specifically and unambiguously commands. But unless we hold our co-religionists to these standards, religion is no longer a healing force, but simply a marker and amplifier of intercommunal strife that actually aggravates the world's problems. There are enough such markers already: let's not use religion as another hook to hang our self-righteousness on.
There have been many references to a 'lack of freedom of religion' in Tibet. Firstly, I have to say that at the time of my visit in 2006 the Tibetans seemed pefectly free to practice their religion - they did prostrations, recited mantras, circumambulated temples, attended large ceremonies and lectures on Buddhism, and so on. The numbers of monks allowed by the Chinese seemed entirely sufficient for the religious purposes of the monasteries, though perhaps not for the temporal power the monasteries were hoping to re-assume. But the most important point is: how can any external circumstance prevent you from practicing your religion? How could anyone prevent you from practicing Mind Training, for instance? The most they could do would be to make your practice more challenging, and hence more interesting, and thus of course do you a favor. The proverbs 'Be grateful to everyone' and 'Don't depend on external conditions' obviously apply here.
Moving on to secular political and human rights issues: the only eyewitness reports from Lhasa by a Western journalist talk of unprovoked, vicious, and deadly racist attacks by ethnic Tibetans, not only on innocent Han Chinese shopkeepers, but also on the Moslem Hui minority who for centuries have performed the thankless task of butchering meat for the Buddhists (who consider themselves too pure for the task, though they are perfectly content to eat the animals that others slaughter). These eyewitness accounts fault the Chinese authorities not for being too forceful in suppressing these riots, but for being too tentative in protecting their own citizens.
Those interested in impartial eyewitness accounts might also want to read this account by a Tibetan monk interviewed by the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7308890.stm), who appears to be objective and animated by a spirit of compassion, and who reaches conclusions generally similar to mine.
The media coverage of this issue has been absolutely appalling - not since the start of Iraq War have I seen such hysterical cheerleading, often based on outright lies, in such a dubious cause. For instance:
* photos and video supposed to represent 'police brutality' in Lhasa that were actually, and obviously, of Nepalese police beating demonstrators in Khatmandu.
* photos supposed to be of Chinese soldiers about to put on monks' robes and instigate a riot were actually stills from a movie shoot in 2000 in which the army were doing the producers of the movie a favor by playing extras. This can be verified by the soldier's uniforms and the livery of the taxicabs, both of which match those in use in 2000 but not those in use today.
* Much editorial comment is frankly racist in tone, seeing the Chinese as a 'threat' because of their economic success - as if that success were somehow their fault!
* The mobs in the video footage at the top right of the page (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOKwXvajsEQ&NR=1) are consistently referred to as 'peaceable protesters'. I dare you to look at the video and tell me that that is an appropriate description.
I have yet to see a single media retraction on any of these points.
The extent to which vicious racist propaganda has infected mainstream coverage of these issues may be judged from the following cartoon. Believe it or not, this is not from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a major and normally reputable newspaper in the Seattle metropolitan area, not from an extremist racist organization as might appear, and is here reproduced under the 'fair use' doctrine of U.S. copyright law for purposes of comment and criticism:
Obviously I feel disgusted by this cartoon both as a Buddhist and as a human being, and I hope you do too. My point is: if this is regarded as acceptable even in the mainstream, just how much hatred and blindness on this issue must we be harboring as a society?
Those with strong stomachs might also want to take a look at the YouTube footage of the riots, including:
* footage of an elderly Chinese man being pulled off his motorcycle by Tibetan rioters and beaten to death with rocks
* an interview with a girl whose mother and sisters were herded into an upstairs room and burned to death by a mob of Tibetans
, and then ask themselves who are the aggressors and who are the victims in this situation.
I found watching these videos extremely upsetting, but I think every Western Buddhist needs to view them, painful as that is, so as to understand that the view of Tibetan culture and religion on which we have been sold is a very partial one, and that there is an enormous dark side that we have not been shown and are unwilling to look at. Unless and until we have taken a good, hard, realistic look at this dark side, we mingle religion and politics at our peril. The Dalai Lama, by the way, claims that these videos (from Chinese Cable TV) are staged, but it is obvious from the scale of the riots, their viciousness, and the near-universal participation in them, that that is completely impossible. They are also confirmed in every particular by the eyewitness testimony of James Miles of the Economist, referred to above. One item to note is the participation of monks in throwing stones, kicking in doors, and looting, as shown in these videos. This is actually not out of line with the history of Tibetan monks, who frequently made war on other monks, nobles, or the common people in pre-Communist Tibet.
If we are not careful, we could fall into the same trap as the medieval Christians who admired St Francis of Asissi and ended up feeling that they therefore had to support the Spanish Inquisition, or Muslim converts who, admiring the Sufi poetry of Rumi and Rabiyah, ended up going to terrorist training camps.
The last major mistake of this order was after the Second World War, when the Allies, sympathizing with the suffering of the Jews, gave them their own country on the theory that they were a humble, modest, and compassionate people who had suffered much and wished nothing more than to live in peace and harmony with their neighbors. We know how that turned out - the oppressed actually typically make the most vicious oppressors.
Western media want to somehow make this the fault of the Chinese, and even to turn this into an argument for Tibetan autonomy, if not independence. If this is a sample of what the Tibetans would do with their desired 'autonomy', obviously it is an excellent thing that they do not have it. They need the Chinese to exercise more control, rather than less, over them, since their Buddhist religion apparently does not prevent them either from destroying property or from taking life.
In my travels in Tibet and Western China I met many Chinese tourists with a great interest in this 'peaceable' people with their deeply 'non-violent' religion living on the roof of the world. How do you think they feel now?
In my opinion the Chinese authorities, after admittedly committing many atrocities in Tibet, as in their own country, up to and including the end of the Cultural Revolution, are now doing a decent and fair job of governing it from the secular point of view. They have granted its people a lot of personal, economic, and religious freedom - as much as they believe to be compatible with political stability. I feel there has been insufficient appreciation of the extraordinarily difficult task they face - of maintaining a delicate balance between regional, ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural, and class interests, all in the middle of the most explosive growth and transformation this planet has ever seen. The task could be compared to that of repairing a delicate and priceless piece of embroidery while riding a galloping horse. Before these riots they might perhaps have been persuaded that it would be safe to grant the Tibetans even more freedom, but that case is completely impossible to make now. I am sure they are regretting giving Tibet as much freedom as they did, and I do not blame them.
The Tibetans involved in the riots have shown themselves to be racist, immature, and completely incapable of self-government - perhaps not surprisingly, in view of the oppressive, feudal, stagnant, insular, and theocratic rule that preceded the arrival of the Chinese. Why Westerners would support a return to a theocratic form of government in Tibet, when they so steadfastly oppose it elsewhere, is a mystery to me.
In fact, when I have longer conversations with people on the subject, what often comes to the surface is anti-Chinese racist attitudes that those same people would instantly regard as unacceptable if directed against, say, Blacks, Hispanics, or Asians.
If you have any comments on this editorial you may reach me through the Feedback Page.
Martin Mellish, Lojong Site Coordinator.
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Risky geopolitical game: Washington plays ‘Tibet Roulette’ with China
F. William Engdahl / Online Journal | April 14, 2008
Washington has obviously decided on an ultra-high risk geopolitical game with Beijing’s by fanning the flames of violence in Tibet just at this sensitive time in their relations and on the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. It’s part of an escalating strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush administration over the past months. It also includes the attempt to ignite an anti-China Saffron Revolution in the neighboring Myanmar region, bringing US-led NATO troops into Darfur where China’s oil companies are developing potentially huge oil reserves. It includes counter moves across mineral-rich Africa. And it includes strenuous efforts to turn India into a major new US forward base on the Asian sub-continent to be deployed against China, though evidence to date suggests the Indian government is being very cautious not to upset Chinese relations.
The current Tibet operation apparently got the green light in October last year when George Bush agreed to meet the Dalai Lama for the first time publicly in Washington. The President of the United States is not unaware of the high stakes of such an insult to Beijing. Bush deepened the affront to America’s largest trading partner, China, by agreeing to attend as the US Congress awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal.
The immediate expressions of support for the crimson monks of Tibet from George Bush, Condi Rice, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel most recently took on dimensions of the absurd. Ms Merkel announced she would boycott attending the August Beijing Summer Olympics as her protest at the Beijing treatment of the Tibetan monks. What her press secretary omitted is that she had not even planned to go in the first place.
She was followed by an announcement that Poland’s prime minister, the pro-Washington Donald Tusk, would also stay away, along with pro-US Czech President Vaclav Klaus. It is unclear whether they also hadn’t planned to go in the first place but it made for dramatic press headlines.
The recent wave of violent protests and documented attacks by Tibetan monks against Han Chinese residents began on March 10, when several hundred monks marched on Lhasa to demand release of other monks allegedly detained for celebrating the award of the US Congress’ Gold Medal last October. The monks were joined by other monks marching to protest Beijing rule on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
The geopolitical game
As the Chinese government itself was clear to point out, the sudden eruption of anti-Chinese violence in Tibet, a new phase in the movement led by the exiled Dalai Lama, was suspiciously timed to try to put the spotlight on Beijing’s human rights record on the eve of the coming Olympics. The Beijing Olympics are an event seen in China as a major acknowledgement of the arrival of a new prosperous China on the world stage.
The background actors in the Tibet “Crimson revolution” actions confirm that Washington has been working overtime in recent months to prepare another of its infamous Color Revolutions, these fanning public protests designed to inflict maximum embarrassment on Beijing. The actors on the ground in and outside Tibet are the usual suspects, tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA’s Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of George Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the latest unrest to sabotage the Olympic Games “in order to achieve their unspeakable goal,” Tibetan independence.
Bush telephoned his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, to pressure for talks between Beijing and the exiled Dalai Lama. The White House said that Bush, “raised his concerns about the situation in Tibet and encouraged the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s representatives and to allow access for journalists and diplomats.”
President Hu reportedly told Bush the Dalai Lama must “stop his sabotage” of the Olympics before Beijing takes a decision on talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.
Dalai Lama’s odd friends
In the West, the image of the Dalai Lama has been so much promoted that in many circles he is deemed almost a god. While the spiritual life of the Dalai Lama is not our focus, it is relevant to note briefly the circles he has chosen to travel in most of his life.
The Dalai Lama travels in what can only be called rather conservative political circles. What is generally forgotten today is that during the 1930s the Nazis, including Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler and other top Nazi Party leaders, regarded Tibet as the holy site of the survivors of the lost Atlantis, and the origin of the “Nordic pure race.”
When he was 11 and already designated Dalai Lama, he was befriended by Heinrich Harrer, a Nazi Party member and officer of Heinrich Himmler’s feared SS. Far from the innocent image of him in the popular Hollywood film with Brad Pitt, Harrer was an elite SS member at the time he met the 11-year-old Dalai Lama and became his tutor in “the world outside Tibet.” While only the Dalai Lama knows the contents of Harrer’s private lessons, the two remained friends until Harrer died at the ripe age of 93 in 2006. [1]
That sole friendship, of course, does not define a person’s character, but it is interesting in the context of later friends. In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, and former Beijing Envoy, CIA director and President George H.W. Bush, the Dalai Lama demanded the British government release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity. The Dalai Lama had close ties to Miguel Serrano [2], head of Chile’s National Socialist Party, a proponent of something called esoteric Hitlerism. [3]
Leaving aside at this point the claim of the Dalai Lama to divinity, what is indisputable is that he has been surrounded and financed in significant part, since his flight into exile in India in 1959, by various US and Western intelligence services and their gaggle of NGOs. It is the agenda of the Washington friends of the Dalai Lama that is relevant here.
The NED at work again . . .
As author Michael Parenti notes in his work, Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth, “during the 1950s and 60s, the CIA actively backed the Tibetan cause with arms, military training, money, air support and all sorts of other help.” The US-based American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in the group. The Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA in 1951. It was later upgraded into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet, according to Parenti. [4]
According to declassified US intelligence documents released in the late 1990s, “for much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama.” [5]
With help of the CIA, the Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, India, where he lives to the present. He continues to receive millions of dollars in backing today, not from the CIA but from a more innocuous-sounding CIA front organization, funded by the US Congress, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED has been instrumental in every US-backed Color Revolution destabilization from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine to Myanmar. Its funds go to back opposition media and global public relations campaigns to popularize their pet opposition candidates.
As in the other recent Color Revolutions, the US government is fanning the flames of destabilization against China by funding opposition protest organizations inside and outside Tibet through its arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The NED was founded by the Reagan Administration in the early 1980s, on the recommendation of Bill Casey, Reagan’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), following a series of high-publicity exposures of CIA assassinations and destabilizations of unfriendly regimes. The NED was designed to pose as an independent NGO, one step removed from the CIA and government agencies so as to be less conspicuous, presumably. The first acting president of the NED, Allen Weinstein, commented to the Washington Post that, “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [6]
American intelligence historian William Blum states, “The NED played an important role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North’s shadowy ‘Project Democracy.” This network privatized US foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs, and engaged in other equally charming activities. In 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED ‘run Project Democracy.’” [7]
The most prominent pro-Dalai Lama, Tibet independence organization today is the International Campaign for Tibet, founded in Washington in 1988. Since at least 1994 the ICT has been receiving funds from the NED. The ICT awarded their annual Light of Truth award in 2005 to Carl Gershman, founder of the NED. Other ICT award winners have included the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Czech leader Vaclav Havel. The ICT Board of Directors is peopled with former US State Department officials, including Gare Smith and Julia Taft. [8]
Another especially active anti-Beijing organization is the US-based Students for a Free Tibet, founded in 1994 in New York City as a project of US Tibet Committee and the NED-financed International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). The SFT is most known for unfurling a 450-foot banner atop the Great Wall in China; calling for a free Tibet, and accusing Beijing of wholly unsubstantiated claims of genocide against Tibet. Apparently it makes good drama to rally naïve students.
The SFT was among five organizations which this past January proclaimed the start of a “Tibetan people’s uprising” on Jan 4 and co-founded a temporary office in charge of coordination and financing.
Harry Wu is another prominent Dalai Lama supporter against Beijing. He became notorious for claiming falsely in a 1996 Playboy interview that he had “videotaped a prisoner whose kidneys were surgically removed while he was alive, and then the prisoner was taken out and shot. The tape was broadcast by BBC.” The BBC film showed nothing of the sort, but the damage was done. How many people check old BBC archives? Wu, a retired Berkeley professor who left China after imprisonment as a dissident, is head of the Laogai Research Foundation, a tax-exempt organization whose main funding is from the NED. [9]
Among related projects, the US government-financed NED also supports the Tibet Times newspaper, run out of the Dalai Lama’s exile base at Dharamsala, India. The NED also funds the Tibet Multimedia Center for “information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet,” also based in Dharamsala. And NED finances the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
In short, the US State Department and US intelligence community’s fingerprints are all over the upsurge of the Free Tibet movement and the anti-Han Chinese attacks of March. The question to be asked is why, and especially why now?
Tibet’s raw minerals treasure
Tibet is of strategic import to China not only for its geographical location astride the border with India, Washington’s newest anti-China ally in Asia. Tibet is also a treasure of minerals and also oil. Tibet contains some of the world’s largest uranium and borax deposits, one half of the world’s lithium, the largest copper deposits in Asia, enormous iron deposits, and over 80,000 gold mines. Tibet’s forests are the largest timber reserve at China’s disposal; as of 1980, an estimated $54 billion worth of trees had been felled and taken by China. Tibet also contains some of the largest oil reserves in the region. [10]
On the Tibet Autonomous Region’s border along the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is also a vast oil and mineral region in the Qaidam Basin, known as a “treasure basin.” The Basin has 57 different types of mineral resources with proven reserves including petroleum, natural gas, coal, crude salt, potassium, magnesium, lead, zinc and gold. These mineral resources have a potential economic value of 15 trillion yuan or US$1.8 trillion. Proven reserves of potassium, lithium and crude salt in the basin are the biggest in China.
And situated as it is, on the “roof of the world,” Tibet is perhaps the world’s most valuable water source. Tibet is the source of seven of Asia’s greatest rivers which provide water for 2 billion people.” He who controls Tibet’s water has a mighty powerful geopolitical lever over all Asia.
But the prime interest of Tibet for Washington today is its potential to act as a lever to destabilize and blackmail the Beijing Government.
Washington’s ‘nonviolence as a form of warfare’
The events in Tibet since March 10 have been played in Western media with little regard to accuracy or independent cross-checking. Most of the pictures blown up in European and US newspapers and TV have not even been of Chinese military oppression of Tibetan lamas or monks. They have been shown to be, in most cases, either Reuters or AFP pictures of Han Chinese being beaten by Tibetan monks in paramilitary organizations. In some instances, German TV stations ran video of beatings that were not even from Tibet but rather by Nepalese police in Kathmandu. [11]
The Western media complicity simply further underlies that the actions around Tibet are part of a well-orchestrated destabilization effort on the part of Washington. What few people realize is that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was also instrumental, along with Gene Sharp’s misnamed Albert Einstein Institution through Colonel Robert Helvey, in encouraging the student protests at Tiananmen Square in June 1989. The Albert Einstein Institution, as it describes itself, specializes in “nonviolence as a form of warfare.” [12]
Colonel Helvey was formerly with the Defense Intelligence Agency stationed in Myanmar. Helvey trained, in Hong Kong, the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989. He is now believed acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong in similar civil disobedience techniques. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with the Albert Einstein Institution and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation long before then. In its annual report for 2004, Helvey’s Albert Einstein Institution admitted to advising people in Tibet. [13]
With the emergence of the Internet and mobile telephone use, the US Pentagon has refined an entirely new form of regime change and political destabilization. As one researcher of the phenomenon behind the wave of color revolutions, Jonathan Mowat, describes it, “ . . . What we are seeing is civilian application of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ doctrine, which depends on highly mobile small group deployments ‘enabled’ by ‘real time’ intelligence and communications. Squads of soldiers taking over city blocks with the aid of ‘intelligence helmet’ video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment, constitute the military side. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones constitute the doctrine’s civilian application.
“This parallel should not be surprising since the US military and National Security Agency subsidized the development of the Internet, cellular phones, and software platforms. From their inception, these technologies were studied and experimented with in order to find the optimal use in a new kind of warfare. The ‘revolution’ in warfare that such new instruments permit has been pushed to the extreme by several specialists in psychological warfare. Although these military utopians have been working in high places, (for example the RAND Corporation), for a very long time, to a large extent they only took over some of the most important command structures of the US military apparatus with the victory of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld.” [14]
Goal to control China
Washington policy has used and refined these techniques of “revolutionary nonviolence,” and NED operations embodied a series of ‘democratic’ or soft coup projects as part of a larger strategy which would seek to cut China off from access to its vital external oil and gas reserves.
The 1970s quote attributed to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a proponent of British geopolitics in an American context comes to mind: “If you control the oil you control entire nations . . .”
The destabilization attempt by Washington using Tibet, no doubt with quiet “help” from its friends in British and other US-friendly intelligence services, is part of a clear pattern.
It includes Washington’s “Saffron revolution” attempts to destabilize Myanmar. It includes the ongoing effort to get NATO troops into Darfur to block China’s access to strategically vital oil resources there and elsewhere in Africa. It includes attempts to foment problems in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and to disrupt China’s vital new energy pipeline projects to Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and Western Europe, China, India and the Middle East, where China depends on uninterrupted oil flows from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries.
Behind the strategy to encircle China
In this context, a revealing New York Council on Foreign Relations analysis, in their Foreign Affairs magazine, by Zbigniew Brzezinski in the September/October 1997 issue, is worth quoting. Brzezinski, a protégé of David Rockefeller and a follower of the founder of British geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder, is today the foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Barack Obama. In 1997 he revealingly wrote: “Eurasia is home to most of the world’s politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world’s most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there, as are all but one of the world’s overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world’s population; 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia’s potential power overshadows even America’s.
“Eurasia is the world’s axial super-continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world’s three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy. . . .” [15] (emphasis mine-w.e.).
This statement, written well before the US-led bombing of the former Yugoslavia and the US military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, or its support of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, puts Washington pronouncements about ‘ridding the world of tyranny’ and about spreading democracy, into a somewhat different context from the one usually mentioned by George W. Bush or others.
It’s about global hegemony, not democracy. It should be no surprise when powers such as China are not convinced that giving Washington such overwhelming power is in China’s national interest, any more than Russia thinks that it would be a step towards peace to let NATO gobble up Ukraine and Georgia and put US missiles on Russia’s doorstep “to defend against threat of Iranian nuclear attack on the United States.”
The US-led destabilization in Tibet is part of a strategic shift of great significance. It comes at a time when the US economy and the US dollar, still the world’s reserve currency, are in the worst crisis since the 1930s. It is significant that the US administration sends Wall Street banker, former Goldman Sachs chairman, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to Beijing in the midst of its efforts to embarrass Beijing in Tibet. Washington is literally playing with fire. China long ago surpassed Japan as the world’s largest holder of foreign currency reserves, now in the range of $1.5 trillion, most of which are invested in US Treasury debt instruments. Paulson knows well that Beijing could to decide it could bring the dollar to its knees by selling only a small portion of its US debt on the market.
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Hey friend,
I think you are drunk and innocent one. And you had proved that you are not followers of Dalai Lama but of Funky gurus. There will be more protest in Germany, India, Swiss, U.S.A etc in coming days. Please learn yourself well in fields of Mother Language Tibetan properly. Don't make your self idiot in front of us.
Shame on your behavior and your instructors.
Wake Wake. Pratice this for 100000 times: Free Tibet, Free Tibet & Save Tibet, Save Tibet from ??????
yours discipliner
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Deleted,
Calm down, man!
If you fear so much the humiliation you should create a group of "true Tibetans" and request the Dalai Lama to stop trying to humiliate the faithful good people that are followers of the holy Buddha Dorje Shugden.
You must know that these people for 12 years have been harassed, persecuted, humiliated, thrown out of everywhere by people like you, that love more one person, the Dalai Lama, than all your fellow Tibetans that are his victims. People that forgot to respect the holy Lamas that did everything for the Tibetans, everything, when you went into exile.
Did you know, poor victim yourself, that those that you and the Dalai Lama are insulting were the ones who created schools for your children, wrote the books for your children to learn in exile, were their school teachers? Did you know it? If you didn't, well now you know it. All these holy benefactors were faithful to Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche and the Holy Protector. And you are insulting the Deity like that? You don't have a heart? You don't have a mother or father? Would you treat them like that? Many many of the things that you enjoy now in India do not come "from the kindness of the Dalai Lama", they come from the love and hard work and the immeasurable kindness of the holy Lamas that worshipped the Protector. Most of them now went to Tushita, but they are seeing you man, listening to your terrible words of ingratitude!
So now stop it! Stop bringing shame on yourself! Stop creating such terrible karma!
And tell the Dalai Lama to stop showing a face of compassion to journalists and politicians and being the tormentor of his fellow Tibetans!
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
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The Strange Tibetan Theocratic Model
Translated lundi 14 avril 2008, par Isabelle Metral
Are Western leaders truly defending human rights ?
Is it possible to criticize the Chinese government without embracing the Dalai Lama’s theocratic project ? For such is the impasse we are heading for as a result of the media-sustained agitation and brainwashing initiated by supporters of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. So history will have taught us nothing. So we have forgotten all about the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games to protest the Red Army’s invasion of Afghanistan in support of Babrak Karmal’s communist government. And how, when it came to condemning this campaign and discrediting communism, just anything went : the US then did not stop at arming and financing all those who fought against the communist government and the Soviets, first among whom the Taliban, then Al Qaeda.
The threat of an Olympics boycott commits us to the same preposterous logic. Apparently, solidarity with the religious Tibetan faction and Tibetan supporters of independence is a must. Never mind if China is severed of a quarter of its territory : that is not something that should make us pause. The feudal regime of the Tibetan monks and their exiled king, the 14th Dalai Lama, must be supported. And the Dalai Lama should be extravagantly recognized as a living God and absolute ruler over the Tibetan people. His grotesque claim to choose, with his higher clergy, the person in whom he professes he will be reincarnated should be assented…
Not content with all that silly stuff we should also negate the historical links between Tibet and China since the fourteenth century. Forget the fact that the independence movement was instigated in the twentieth century by Western powers at the height of their imperialist supremacy in order to carve China up. Keep mum about what “the 1959 Chinese crackdown” really cracked down upon : the Tibetan monks’ revolt against the abolition of serfdom and feudal taxes and codes, by virtue of which there was a scale of prices for diverse categories of human beings and the monasteries’ masters had the power of life and death over their serfs…
We are also expected to protest indignantly against the police suppressing the demonstrations in Lhassa, and make nothing of the fact that these started with a pogrom of Chinese shopkeepers. Waste no pity on those who were clubbed to death and burnt in their shops with their families by those who claim to support the Dalai Lama. Have no scruple about calling “genocide” the more than doubling of the Tibetan population since the 1950s. Bow low before the Tibetans’ so-called religious identity at a time when those populations have embarked on the secularizing process characteristic of all developing countries. Turn a blind eye to the strange social code that fidelity to tradition and Tibetan identity as preached by Tibetan monks entails : the condemnation of abortion and homosexuality (deemed unnatural by the Dalai Lama himself), of mixed marriages between Tibetans and Chinese, considered impure, the recruitment of children at a very early age by the monasteries… Say nothing about the recent campaign against the railway linking Beijing and Lassa, with arguments that were used in the nineteenth century, e.g. the condemnation of railways by Pope Gregory XVI as a devilish means to spread new ideas and subvert religious tradition.
How can one invoke human rights and accept the negation of the secularist separation of church and state ?
The present campaign in favour of an Olympics boycott therefore amounts to a manipulation ; it is a trap for the setting of which the rights of Tibetans and Chinese merely serve as a pretext. If the real aim was to put pressure on the Chinese government, why did Western leaders allow China to submit its application and why didn’t they say anything when it was elected to play host to the Games ? Why do they keep signing contracts worth billions of dollars ? Is China an eligible partner for the purchase of nuclear power stations or US Treasury bonds, but not for the organization of the Games ? And why choose to meet it on the ethnic field rather than the social field ? Is it not because Western powers would have a problem if social claims in China were met ?
All this hypocrisy binds the US and Europe to an aggressive escalation against China as a nation : the result will be a unanimous surge of national feeling across the country. The strategists behind this worldwide campaign have rested their hopes precisely on this. The fact it is headed by Robert Ménard [1] is a sure indication that US neo-conservatives are behind it. When all’s said and done, the sorcerer’s apprentices will be found to have once more befuddled us all.
Jean-Luc Mélanchon is a Socialist senator.
[1] Co-founder and general secretary (for life) of the French association Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF). Mélenchon remarks in his blog, now translated into English, that the RSF "has shrunken, becoming this one individual" whose defense of civil liberties depends, in an opportunistic way, on the government in question, "being incapable of even token criticism of the use of torture by the U.S., or of seeking legal aid for those detained in Guantanamo."
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//www.german-foreign-policy.com/
Particularly Manipulative
2008/04/18
LHASA/BEIJING/BERLIN
(Own report) - The west's Tibet campaign is meeting its first signs of opposition in Germany. As the worldwide acts to sabotage the Olympic torch relay continues, German businesses are beginning to worry about their business prospects in China, amounting currently to a turnover in the billions. Policy advisors are warning that if the German government continues to apply "different standards (...) to different countries" it could cause a permanent loss of political credibility in Beijing. German correspondents agree that the presumptuous campaign orchestrated by western former colonial powers to humiliate China is weakening pro-western forces in the country. They report that in the People's Republic, the German media "is seen as particularly manipulative." Experts confirm the propagandist nature of German newscasts on Tibet. In a discussion with german-foreign-policy.com, the sinologist, Dr. Ingo Nentwig, whose work focuses on China's nationality policy, spoke of a blatant "disproportion in the media version." Sports associations and the Protestant Church are now joining the west's mass mobilization against China. They are calling on athletes and Protestant Olympic tourists to use their presence at the Olympic games to reinforce pressure on China.
Growth Market
Over the past few days, leading business representatives and business associations have been venting their resentment to the media about the west's Tibet campaign. With rising profits, the significance of German business with China has been growing steadily. Last year alone, exports to the People's Republic grew by 9.4% to a total of 54 Billion Euros. A rejection by Chinese consumers would signify as big a loss as that incurred from a loss of contracts with the Chinese government. Investment difficulties in China would also damage German enterprises. "Limitations in business relations would (...) sensitively affect the German economy in an important growth market" explained the chairman of the Asian-Pacific Committee of German Business (APA) Juergen Hambrecht.[1] Hambrecht is the CEO of the BASF Chemical Corporation, which is greatly profiting from the low wages and the advantageous Chinese framework for businesses. BASF has invested billions in China, which now ranks as its third largest market after Germany and the USA.
Loss of Credibility
German policy advisors are also warning. The Institute of Asian Studies at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg admonishes in a realistic appraisal of the situation that "China will not submit to brusque demands from other governments". One should be "wary of applying different standards for comparable situations to different countries" writes the think-tank, directly insinuating the Tibet campaign. By applying double standards "every position, even unambiguous, loses its credibility" [2] and destroys the basis for any subsequent negotiations. This is all the more serious, because the authors discern an explicit shift in the international balance of power - political and economic leverage is having less effect than previously on China. According to the IAS, "in questions concerning North Korea, the Iranian atomic program or protection of the global climate, nothing can be done without China."[3] "Punitive economic sanctions are more damaging to western national economies than to the Chinese."
Humiliations
Beijing-based correspondents confirm the basis for apprehension expressed by business and policy advisors. "Many Chinese, inside and outside of the People's Republic, feel internationally humiliated" writes a leading German daily about reactions to the western campaign. "Even those Chinese citizens, who otherwise express criticisms of the government, are united in rebuking western criticism."[4] Memories of operations by the 19th and 20th century colonial powers is very much alive in China today - they were successful in splitting China and pitting one region of the country against another with bloody consequences for the entire country. The current western humiliations are a reminder of the aggressions of that period, they weaken domestic pro-western forces and are paving the way for boycotting pro-Chinese forces. A China-based TV correspondent reported: "the majority of the population is confronting the rest of the world, above all the western media, with a defiant anger.[5]
Insulting
According to the correspondent, the "weeks of the western media barrage" is not only considered "insulting" in China, "the German media," whose newscasts are being carefully followed by a growing Chinese community in Germany, is "now seen as particularly manipulative."[6] "That should be taken seriously" says the journalist "because up to now, the foreign media has had a relatively high credibility in China. That has been completely turned around."[7]
Disproportionate
There is not only criticism of the evaluative character of reporting, even the factual allegations often are misleading or even false. Dr. Ingo Nentwig, Sinologist, ethnologist and an expert on Chinese nationality policy, sees the often used term "cultural genocide" in reference to the developments in Tibet as "totally inappropriate," or that Beijing seeks to "Sinize" Tibet "false." In his talk with german-foreign-policy.com, Nentwiig sets the record straight on common preconceptions of China and its nationality policy, sharply criticizing news reporting in Germany. "The proportionality in newscasts has disappeared."
Mass Mobilization
In defiance of all warnings and in spite of criticism from circles with interests in the area, Berlin is escalating the Tibet campaign. German politicians' most recent declarations call for a TV boycott of important Olympic ceremonies. Even sports associations and the German Protestant Church have begun a mass anti-Chinese mobilization for the games. An unspecified sports initiative is preparing armbands for participants to wear in the Olympics as a protest against their hosts. For the same purpose, the Protestant Church is distributing armbands to German Olympic tourists. The provocations against China are systematically promoting nationalist tensions and are beginning to take on the character of a mass movement.
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//www.german-foreign-policy.com/
Operations Against China
2008/04/15
LHASA/WASHINGTON/BERLIN
(Own report) - Several front organizations of German foreign policy have for years been supporting the Tibetan exile structures in Dharamsala, India. This includes support for organizational measures enabling the "government in exile" in Dharamsala to orchestrate its activities against the People's Republic of China worldwide. Particularly the Free Democratic Party (FDP) affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the Heinrich Boell Foundation (affiliated with the Green Party) are cooperating with the "government in exile" and other exile Tibetan institutions. Front organizations of US foreign policy are working toward the same objectives. Already in the 1950s Washington was intervening in Tibet with millions of dollars, at the time, even supporting Tibetan armed uprisings against the People's Republic of China. German organizations took up the question of Tibet around the end of the 80s, at a time when China was beginning its rise to become a global competitor of the west. The current activities are apt to greatly weaken China. These supplement other German-US measures aimed at thwarting the rise of their East-Asian rival.
Guerrilla Attacks
The first western activities in Tibet began only a few years after the founding of the People's Republic of China. These activities are still today emblazoned in China's political memory and play no insignificant role in China's judgment of the current secessionist tendencies. The US logistical and military support for the armed Tibetan rebellions, beginning in 1957, was aimed at destabilizing the communist government.[1] The intervention outlasted the Dalai Lama's flight into exile in Dharamsala, India, where, after 1959, a Tibetan "government in exile" was called into being. According to official documents from the government in Washington, during the 1960s the CIA was paying up to $1.7 million per year to maintain "operations against China." Up to $180,000 was given directly to the Dalai Lama.[2] Isolated skirmishes continued up into the 1970s. According to the Tibet expert, Prof. Karenina Kollmar-Paulenz, "Guerrilla attacks, originating in Mustang, a Tibetan enclave in Nepal, persisted with US-American support until 1974, when the USA and the Nepalese government stopped their help."[3] Two years earlier, Washington had entered into a new cooperation with Beijing that defined their common efforts against Moscow to be top priority.
Green Alternative
German organizations have become intensively engaged in the Tibet question since the 1980s, when the People's Republic of China began an economic upswing that has now placed it in the top ranks of global commercial statistics. Already at that time political strategists were predicting the possibility of China's rise to becoming a major power and foresaw rivalry between China and western powers. Using contacts to Tibet by "alternative" political circles, who had converted to Buddhism, the Green parliamentary group, through hearings and parliamentary resolutions, placed the questions of autonomy and the demands for secession in that region of China on the political agenda of the Bundestag in 1985. Tsewang Norbu, a former assistant of the Dalai Lama, helped shape policy on Tibet, first as an employee of the Green parliamentarian Petra Kelly and, since 1992, as an employee of the Green Party affiliated Heinrich Boell Foundation. In addition, Norbu founded the German-Tibetan Cultural Society and, over an extended period of time, presided as its vice-chairman. He also works as a "special correspondent" for the US financed "Radio Free Asia" (RFA). RFA is among the news sources of western reporting on the recent uprising in Tibet.
Political Decision-Making Process
Two of the most influential German party-affiliated foundations are particularly engaged in Tibet-related activities. Former President of Germany, Roman Herzog, qualifies their work as "effective instruments of German foreign policy".[4] These foundations are mainly government financed. One, the FDP-affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNSt) has been counseling the Tibetan exile parliament "in all questions of political education" since 1991. A few years ago the foundation claimed that this function will be "very important for the political decision-making process of Tibetan parliamentarians".[5] One of their project partners, the "Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Center" (TPPRC) organizes workshops for the Tibetan exile communities that are mostly found in India or in Nepal.[6] It also teaches Tibetan students "how they can serve their country within and outside the government."[7] 500 students took part in the seminars between 2003 and 2007. The FNSt has also been organizing conferences since the mid-90s that are meant to "coordinate the work of the international Tibet groups and strengthen their links to the central Tibetan 'government in exile'," a complicated enterprise that facilitates the worldwide networking of Tibet militants with Dharamsala. The most recent of these conferences ended in May 2007 with agreement on an "plan of action" which would include the use of the summer Olympic Games to take place in Beijing for the exile Tibetan cause. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[8])
Justification
Also active for the "Tibet cause" is the Green Party affiliated Heinrich Boell Foundation, which, like the FNSt works out of its branch office in India. According to its own indications, it "intensified the focus of its years long support for the exile Tibetan community at the turn of the year 2005/2006."[9] They are now concentrating their support on two organizations that have their headquarters in the exile Tibetan "capital" Dharamsala. They are the "Tibetan Center for Conflict Resolution" (TCCR) that mediates conflicts that arise within the community and more particularly the "Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy" (TCHRD). The TCHRD publishes annual reports on Human Rights violations in Tibet and is very significant for the justification of Tibetan political demands. The Heinrich Boell Foundation writes that "taking into consideration the persisting - even though seemingly futile - demands for Tibetan self-determination, there still exists (...) an urgent need for documentation of human rights violations and the policy of assimilation carried out by the Chinese state authorities in Tibet, such as produced by the TCHRD."[10] The TCHRD is also being supported by the "National Endowment for Democracy" (NED), a front organization for US foreign policy that has become notorious for sponsoring the "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Conflagration
German foundations' activities around Tibet touch one of the most sensitive spots in Chinese policy. Not only do they represent interference into the domestic affairs of that nation, they also threaten the People's Republic's territorial integrity. "To a certain extent, Tibet is the cornerstone of a fragile multi-ethnic state," writes a policy advisor at the Institute of Asian Studies of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. "A horror scenario for Beijing is that beginning with Tibet, a conflagration develops." One finds "designated on a map published in a 1990 autobiography of the Dalai Lama (...) alongside Greater Tibet also 'East Turkestan,' as the area where Moslem Uygurs settled, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria."[11] The secession of these regions would have drastic consequences: "the remaining Chinese settled areas would have shrunk to a third of the People's Republic."
Strategic, Rather Than Legalistic
In fact, the current Tibet campaign, with the participation of German organizations, is but an example of Berlin's and Washington's growing anti-Chinese policy. In Africa, Germany and the USA are now openly agitating against China.[12] Aggressive competition is being practiced also in Latin America [13] as well as in Central Asia [14]. India is seen as a possible counter-balance for the containment of the People's Republic. The west is wooing it accordingly.[15] Here, Tibet could also provide leverage for spurring New Delhi's reticent ruling circles on course. According to the declaration of a former official of the Indian Foreign Ministry, it is "high time for India" to give up its "timid rapprochement" with China and place Beijing "under pressure" also on the Tibet question. The relations with China must be developed "from a strategic, rather than legalistic perspective." The position paper has been put up for debate by the Heinrich Boell Foundation' Indian field office.[16]
Not Tolerated
Not least among the consequences, the Tibet campaign is also stimulating an anti-Chinese atmosphere in Germany leaving a dwindling amount of room for criticism. Opinions that are at variance with the anti-Beijing mainstream are, in the meantime, being punished. In Cologne a sinologist's lecture on the theme of Tibet had to be cancelled at the last minute. The organizers had criticized the one-sided western media reporting and sought to initiate a differentiated debate of the conflict.[17] This intention led to the cancellation on short notice of the rental contract for the location in the Cologne Community Center. Those responsible for the community center made it known that no "anti-Tibetan" events would be tolerated.
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This article by University of Ottawa economics professor Michel Chossudovsky provides excellent examples of western media fabrications about recent events in Tibet.
The article and photos are at http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8697
Western Media Fabrications regarding the Tibet Riots
Fake Videotape used by CNN
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, April 16, 2008
On the day of the Lhasa Riots (March 14, 2008), there is evidence of media fabrication by CNN.
The videotape presented by CNN in its News Report on the 14th of March (1.00pm EST) was manipulated.
VIDEO: Tibet monks protest against Chinese rulers (CNN, March 14, 2008)
The report presented by CNN's Beijing Correspondent John Vause focussed on the Tibet protests in Gansu province and in the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
What was shown, however, was a videotape of the Tibet protest movement in India.
Viewers were led to believe that the protests were in China and that the Indian police shown in the videotape were Chinese cops.
At the outset of the report, a few still pictures were presented followed by a videotape showing police repressing and arresting demonstrators in what appeared to be a peaceful protest:
.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT
[CNN Vause reports on the protest movement in Gansu province. (starts at 1'.00)]
CNN received these photographs from Gansu province, where there is a large Tibetan population. [still photographs followed by video footage] According to Students for a Free Tibet, about 2,000 protestors took to the streets earlier today. They were there for about three hours. They flew the Tibetan flag and called for an independent Tibet. All of this comes after days of unrest in Tibet after monks, who were marking the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule. (CNN News, 1.00pm EST, March 14, 2008)
The voice over of John Vause then shifts into reporting on violence in Lhasa. The videotape however depicts the Tibetan protest in Himashal Pradesh, India.
[JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT]
And what could be worrying here to Beijing is that these demonstrations are being joined by ordinary Tibetan civilians, lay Tibetans. The targets here are ethnic Chinese. We've been told by one Chinese woman that she was attacked by Tibetan rioters. Her injuries sent her to hospital.
Also under fire here, Chinese-owned businesses, as well as government offices, and also the security forces.
According to U.S.-based human rights groups, the three main monasteries on the outskirts of Lhasa have now been surrounded by Chinese troops, and they've been sealed off.
We've also heard over the last couple of days, according to human rights groups, that more than a dozen monks have been rounded up and arrested. And there are reports, unconfirmed, that at least two people have been killed.
The video footage, which accompanied CNN's John Vause's report, had nothing to do with China. The police were not Chinese, but Indian cops in khaki uniforms from the Northeastern State of Himachal Pradesh, India.
Viewers were led to believe that demonstrations inside China were peaceful and that people were being arrested by Chinese cops.
Chinese Cops in Khaki Uniforms
1'.27-1'.44" video footage of "Chinese cops" and demonstrators including Buddhist monks. Chinese cops are shown next to Tibetan monks
Are these Chinese Cops from Gansu Province or Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, as suggested by CNN's John Vause's Report?
REPORT ON CHINA, MARCH 14
Alleged Chinese cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in China , CNN, March 14, 2008 1'.36''
Alleged Chinese cops in khaki uniforms repressing Tibet demonstrators in China, CNN, March 14, 2008 1'40"
Their khaki uniforms with berets seem to bear the imprint of the British colonial period.
Khaki colored uniforms were first introduced in the British cavalry in India in 1846.
Khaki means "dust" in Hindi and Persian.
Moreover, the cops with khaki uniforms and mustache do not look Chinese.
Look carefully.
They are Indian cops.
The videotape shown on March 14 by CNN is not from China (Gansu Province or Lhasa, Tibet's Capital). The video was taken in the State of Himachal Pradesh, India. The videotape of the Tibet protest movement in India was used in the CNN report on the Tibet protest movement within China.
In a March 13 Report by CNN, demonstrators are being arrested by Indian police in khaki uniforms during a protest march at Dehra, about 50 km from Dharamsala in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.
VIDEO; Tibet Protest movement in India, CNN, March 13, 2008
"Indian police arrested around 100 Tibetans on Thursday, dragging them into waiting police vans, as they tried to march to the Chinese border to press claims for independence and protest the Beijing Olympics." (REUTERS/Abhishek Madhukar (INDIA))
Below are images from the CNN's report on March 13, on the protest movement in Himachal Pradesh, India:
Compare these images to those in the March 14 CNN report. Same cops, same uniforms, same Indian style mustache
CNN MARCH 13 REPORT ON INDIA
Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008 0'.53"
Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008 1'.02"
Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008, 1'.18"
Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008 2.04"
We invite our readers to examine these two reports as well as the Transcript of the March 14 CNN program.
The CNN's March 14 report on the Tibet Protest movement in China shows Chinese cops in khaki uniforms, yellow lapels and berets. While the videotape is not identical to that of March 13, CNN's coverage of the events in China on March 14 used a videotape taken from the coverage of the Tibet Protest movement in India, with Indian cops in khaki uniforms.
The protest movement in India on March 13 was "peaceful". It was organised by the Dalai Lama's "government in exile". It took place within 50 km of the headquarters of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.
The Western media was invited in to film the event, and take pictures of Buddhist monks involved in a peaceful, nonviolent march. These are the pictures which circled the World.
So what has occurred is that CNN has copied and pasted its own videotape of the Tibet Protest movement in India and has fabricated a Gansu Province/ Lhasa, China "peaceful" protest movement with Chinese cops in khaki British colonial style uniforms.
The Chinese never adopted the British style khaki uniform and beret.
These uniforms do not correspond to those used by the police in China. (See photograph below)
No khaki uniforms in China. These are the uniforms of China's "Armed Police".
Meanwhile, the images of the violent riots in Lhasa, in which a criminal mob set fire to shops, homes and schools, burning several people alive, and stabbing innocent civilians with knives were not shown on network TV in the US and Western Europe. Small segments of the riots in Lhasa were shown out of context and with a view to accusing the Chinese authorities of repressing a "peaceful protest".(See our report on the events, see coverage of the Lhasa Riots by China's CC-TV)
While the videotape used is not identical, both CNN reports, however, show the same cops in khaki uniforms and the same Tibetan demonstrators in India. The footage used in support of CNN's March 14 coverage of the protext movement in China has nothing to do with China. it happened in India.
CNN has got its countries mixed up.
Sloppy journalism or media fraud?
VIDEO: Tibet monks protest against Chinese rulers (CNN, March 14, 2008)
VIDEO; Tibet Protest movement in India, (CNN, March 13, 2008)
COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF CNN NEWS COVERAGE ON TIBET (MARCH 14, 2008
CNN NEWSROOM 1:00 PM EST
March 14, 2008 Friday
[with Don Lemon and John Vause reporting from Beijing]
....
LEMON: All right. So this place, we know, should be known for peace. Right? But that is not what is happening here lately.
Buddhist monks demonstrating for independence from China. Ethnic Tibetans join in, and soon -- soon streets are filled with screams, with gunfire, with rioting. And so far the Chinese government has refused to allow CNN to even enter Tibet.
Our John Vause brings us what he knows. He's in Beijing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The latest information from our sources in Lhasa tell us that the streets are basically deserted, except for patrols by police cars and armored military vehicles.
We're told fires are still burning and phone lines are still down, but electricity has been restored. And the situation there now is described as relatively calm. But these protests do appear to be spreading to the east of the country.
CNN received these photographs from Gansu province [still picture followed by live video of Indian protest], where there is a large Tibetan population. According to Students for a Free Tibet, about 2,000 protestors took to the streets earlier today. They were there for about three hours. They flew the Tibetan flag and called for an independent Tibet. All of this comes after days of unrest in Tibet after monks, who were marking the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
And what could be worrying here to Beijing is that these demonstrations are being joined by ordinary Tibetan civilians, lay Tibetans. The targets here are ethnic Chinese. We've been told by one Chinese woman that she was attacked by Tibetan rioters. Her injuries sent her to hospital.
Also under fire here, Chinese-owned businesses, as well as government offices, and also the security forces.
According to U.S.-based human rights groups, the three main monasteries on the outskirts of Lhasa have now been surrounded by Chinese troops, and they've been sealed off.
We've also heard over the last couple of days, according to human rights groups, that more than a dozen monks have been rounded up and arrested. And there are reports, unconfirmed, that at least two people have been killed.
Beijing has now moved to seal off Tibet, banning foreigners and journalists from traveling there. Flights and train services have also been canceled.
John Vause, CNN, Beijing.
(END OF VIDEOTAPE)
This is not the only example of media fabrication where video images and photographs are manipulated.
What really happened.
Compare CNN's report using a fake videotape to the coverage of the Lhasa riots on China State TV.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z_prFMROC8
coverage of the Lhasa Riots by China State Television CC-TV
Who is Telling the Truth?